Hugs Are Not The Answer (They're The Question And The Answer Is Yes)
by rukushaka
Summary: First there are the nightmares. Then there's the mission to Atlanta to deal with an outbreak of venomous killer rabbits. It goes fine, right up until the last ten minutes (and Bucky should have expected it, because nothing ever goes fine for them). Epic bromance, no slash, standard supporting cast. Set post-CA:CW.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Captain America. Or Bucky Barnes. Or the Avengers. Marvel does.**

 **Huge shout-out to my two beta readers, who very kindly read over this and anti-brit-picked it for any wording or phrasing that was noticeably un-American (e.g. carpark/parking lot). I've left the NZ/UK spelling alone, so you'll see 'favourite' with a u, etc. But the syntax should be American. It's only fitting. It is a Captain America fic, after all.**

 **Here we go! Seven chapters of angst, h/c, and humour centred around the epic bromance / platonic friendship between Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Fic written post-Civil War; the story is set post CW, post Wakanda, and then some. It makes the assumption that the Avengers get back together, more or less, even if they're not officially called the Avengers, and that they're living at the Facility set up at the end of Age of Ultron. Total word count 32,000. And yes, I've finished writing the whole thing, so you won't be left hanging on this. I promise. Finishing the fic _before_ I start posting chapters is a really good way to make sure of that.**

 **The overall story prompt is below. Each chapter uses an individual prompt as well. And sometimes an art/pinterest prompt.**

 **Leave a review if you enjoy it! Really. Even "I read this and I liked it, my favourite bit was _" makes my day.**

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Story prompt: Steve and Bucky have a very intense and clearly very deep friendship, and everyone thinks they are together. One day, someone takes them aside and gently explains that it's ok now, they don't have to hide anymore. Bucky and Steve are horrified by the suggestion. Not because they are homophobic, but because they literally regard each other as brothers. They are family.

Inadvertent art fill: pinterest dot com /pin/506936501788675546/

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 **Chapter One**

Prompt: Cold

Inadvertent art fill: pinterest dot com /pin/470415123556518376/

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Bucky finished slipping into his red shirt and stepped into the common room. Even in the small hours of the morning, the facility wasn't cold enough that he _needed_ the shirt. It was a matter of decorum.

Tony had done his best with the new metal arm, but the scarring around the shoulder joint wasn't anything the rest of the team needed to see. The Russians had all but welded his nervous system into the arm, and his skin along with it. Even a Stark couldn't do much for that seventy-year-old mess. They had called in Helen Cho for a consultation, just to see what their options were. She'd taken it as a personal affront, or a challenge, or both, when Tony discarded her initial suggestion offhand. A few more viable ways and means had been flung around, most of them in technobabble that went straight over Bucky's head.

In the end he'd decided it was a whole lot of fuss and bother over something that didn't matter all that much anymore. It didn't worry _him._ The scars didn't hurt, physically, and even the psychological damage was mostly dealt with. It might be different in summer, but the hot weather was months away yet. In the meantime, in the interests of public decency, he wore a shirt anytime he stepped out of his room.

A familiar form stood in front of the fridge, silhouetted against the bright interior.

"Couldn't sleep?" Bucky grabbed a glass from the shelf and filled it before taking a sip. Yeah, that was good. Just what he needed. He drained the glass in one go and then refilled it again.

Steve didn't look around from his contemplation of the cold depths.

"Steve?" Bucky darted a look at him and noted the slow drag of eyelashes as he blinked. Awake, then. And more-or-less present. It was a good start.

Despite the warm night, he was wearing sweatpants and a grey hoodie with the Veterans' Association logo splashed across it. No visible weaponry. Bare feet.

Steve still didn't move. Whatever was in that fridge must _really_ be fascinating. But after a minute he spoke. "Do you ever think of going back?"

Bucky blinked. Cast another assessing look over his best friend. No obvious signs of a head wound. Concussion unlikely. Brain damage even more unlikely, knowing Steve's thick head. "To Hydra? Can't say that I do."

"Not to Hydra." The words slurred together slightly; not much, not enough that anyone else would have noticed, probably. But Bucky wasn't anyone else. He'd been listening for it, and he nodded to himself. Steve needed sleep. _Yesterday_. "To Brooklyn," Steve said.

"You've seen house prices there, right? They're astronomical, and I say that as someone who hangs out with a flying demigod on occasion — "

"To Peggy."

The hairs on the back of Bucky's neck rose. Almost unconsciously, his right hand dropped to check the hunting knife tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. "Peggy's dead, Steve."

"I know." Steve heaved a shuddering breath and swung the fridge door shut, leaving them in the half-light from the night sensors. He didn't turn his head. "I know she is."

Bucky frowned and slid sideways, bare feet silent on the tiles, until he stood directly in front of Steve.

Steve stared over his shoulder, that thoughtful frown furrowing his brows.

"So?" Bucky said softly. "What did you mean?"

"Everyone we knew is dead."

Bucky took a breath. Reconsidered. Let it out. _Gently, gently._ Steve hadn't needed handling with kid gloves for a long time, not since… oh, long before the war. But there was a time and place for being a smart-mouth. _Now_ and _here_ wasn't it. "Yeah. They are."

"Peggy. The boys. Howard…"

Bucky closed his eyes. He had trouble with that, some days. He and Howard hadn't been particularly close, but they'd still been friends. It was a hard-learned habit to let the guilt wash over him, to resist the siren call as it ebbed.

He wouldn't drown in it. Not this time.

It felt weird, looking at Tony. They were so alike, father and son, with their breathtaking arrogance and their scintillating brilliance. Civilians fighting in a war, doing their best with whatever scraps they had available. Sometimes he looked at Tony and saw Howard instead. He'd had a close call or two, but the name had never slipped out, thank goodness. He wasn't entirely sure what Tony what have done if it had. It wouldn't be anything good.

"I want to go home," Steve whispered.

Bucky opened his eyes. Steve was looking at him, now, instead of past him. Progress. Maybe he could afford to push back a bit. "Home? To who?"

"Our friends. Your family."

"There was a war. Half of them'll be dead, too."

Steve's jaw clenched. "So we'll fight. We'll drive the Nazis back, storm the Hydra bases."

"Okay, say you do that. But the war will end. When did your plane go down? March 1945, right? The war ends in September, that's only another six months of fighting. And what will you do then? Go back to Brooklyn, buy a house, find a girl who can maybe just see past Captain America to Steve Rogers? Settle down, raise a family?" Bucky shook his head. "That's not _you,_ Steve."

"The war won't end," Steve said. "There's always a war."

Which was the crux of the matter, Bucky knew. He'd done his research. He knew what Ultron had said. _God's righteous man, pretending you can live without a war._ "So you'll just keep fighting. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"In the 40's. Without me, without the team here. With the low tech and the old transport and the rubbish medicine, millions of people dying of diseases that are all but eradicated today."

"Yes."

"Is that all there is?"

Steve blinked.

"The war," Bucky pressed. "Is that everything?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to. Bucky knew how inextricably Steve had tangled himself in the mentality of _fight and fight and fight and get knocked down and get back up and keep fighting._ He knew that as long as there was injustice in the world, Steve thought it was his sole responsibility to fix it. He also knew Steve could be wrong.

"Okay," Bucky said. "One question. What are you fighting _for_? Or are you just fighting _against?_ "

"There's always a war," Steve repeated. "There's always something to fight."

"Answer the question."

"I —" Steve frowned. "Freedom."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Come on, pal. Give me the Steve Rogers answer, not the Captain America answer."

A flicker of doubt showed in those true-blue eyes. "I don't — "

"No, you _don't_." Bucky took him by the shoulders and felt the tremors under the bulky hoodie. "You don't know. That's the problem. Are you sure you want to be fighting a war if you don't know _why_? Take it from someone who knows: that's not a good way to live."

"You didn't have a choice."

"No, but I do now. And so do you."

"I can't." Steve made a soft, hiccuping sound. "I can't just let them die."

Bucky tightened his grip. "They're already dead."

"But if I'd been there — if I can go back and _help them —_ "

"Don't. _Don't,_ Steve. You can't, and there's no point pretending you can. You're not an army."

Rebellion glinted in his eyes. "I'm near enough."

"No, you're not. You never have been. You're not a one-man cure-all. And who are you to decide who lives and dies, huh?"

"That's not what it is."

"Isn't it? Messing with time, saving the ones you think are _worthy,_ killing the ones you think aren't? That's a very slippery slope."

"Hydra — "

"Oh, _Hydra._ " Bucky snorted. "Because they're all unambiguously evil, is that right? Like the Nazis. The Germans, the Italians. Entire countries are unworthy and you're gonna put them to the sword? They're not just, I dunno, people doing a job to get money to pay rent and buy groceries and have a little left over at the end of the week if they're lucky?"

If Steve wasn't so exhausted, he'd hear the echo of his own words in Bucky's. They'd talked this one out many a time.

"I was Hydra," Bucky said, trying to keep his voice steady. "You going to kill me?"

"They made you do it."

"I still did it. Didn't know why, but I did it. Man on the street out there doesn't know why he's doing it either. He's just working at a munitions factory. Does it really matter what country he's in?"

Steve's mouth opened. Gaped. Bucky saw the moment he hit the metaphorical wall, the moment all the fight went out of him. Good. Whatever ideology Steve was parroting, it wasn't his own. He was clutching at straws to defend his position. He didn't believe what he was saying. "You didn't answer the question," he said finally.

Bucky took a breath. "What question was that?"

"Do you ever think of going back?"

Of course he had. He'd lost hours caught up in daydreams of what if, what if, what if. If he didn't have seventy years of torture and brainwashing and dehumanisation and murder under his belt. If he hadn't given in to the conditioning, hadn't lost his arm, hadn't fallen from the train. If Zola hadn't taken him for experimentation. If the war had never happened.

"Yes," he said.

"And?"

"No." He saw surprise spark in Steve's gaze at that. "It's a pointless exercise, but if I had the choice? I wouldn't go back. Whatever Hydra did to me, whatever they made me into, made me do… it doesn't change the fact that I'm here. And you're here. Yes, we've lost good friends. Family. So what? That happens all the time. Everyone loses loved ones. Jumping back seventy years won't solve that. And we shouldn't want to solve it. Death _happens._ Sometimes we just — we need to let it happen."

Steve's gaze went distant for a moment. "You know it's going to happen again. Everyone we love will die, and we'll… be here. Existing."

"We'll still grow old."

"Slowly."

"I know," Bucky said. He cast an assessing eye over Steve. Stable. Shivering, but stable. The gleam of manic despair had vanished. His eyes were focused on the here-and-now. Good. "Home's a long way away."

A flash of bitter grief crossed Steve's face. "You're telling me."

"Alternatively…" He waited until he was sure Steve was listening with both ears. "Home's right here."

The facade cracked. Bucky caught Steve as he broke, arms wrapped tight around him. No tears. Steve looked too exhausted even for that. But Bucky felt him tremble, felt the breath coming too fast from his lungs, the desperate way he returned the embrace and clutched Bucky's shirt at his back.

"If — if you weren't here — "

"Shh," Bucky murmured. "If I wasn't here, you'd soldier on like you always have. You'd make new friends, find a new family. But — for what it's worth — me, too." He tightened his grip. If Steve wasn't here… if he'd woken from that seventy-year nightmare to find that Steve was long dead, or worse… He didn't know what he would have done.

No, that was a lie.

He _did_ know what he would have done.

He shuddered and shoved the thoughts away.

Steve gave vent to a jaw-cracking yawn.

"You need to sleep," Bucky said.

"Can't."

"Have you tried?"

"Yes."

Bucky waited, but that was apparently all the intel their revered leader deemed fit to pass along. He sighed. Not that he minded a hug or ten from his best friend, but this would be a lot more comfortable if they were sitting down. "Couch. Come on."

He got Steve settled, wrapped a thick blanket around him, and made him a mug of coffee that was so thick and black and sweet it nearly gave Bucky flashbacks to the war just smelling it. "Here."

Steve took the mug without protest, wrapping both hands tight around it. He sipped and blinked. "It's good. Thanks."

"Yeah, well, it's not like I've had experience making you coffee or anything." Coffee duty had usually been delegated to him or Falsworth, as the two with the best knack for it. Bucky had always loaded Steve's up with as much sugar as he could manage, accounting for their limited supplies. The man burnt calories like there was no tomorrow.

"I noticed, you know," Steve said.

"Noticed what?"

"The sugar."

Bucky stole a corner of the blanket and nestled close, slinging his arm around Steve. The shivering hadn't abated, but he thought it might have settled a little. He'd give it time. "I don't take sugar in my coffee."

"You used to. Back in Brooklyn."

That was true. "Used to do a lot of things back in Brooklyn." At war, well… there had been more important things to worry about.

"I'm not stupid, Buck."

Bucky bit back a grin. "With your borderline-photographic memory? Course you aren't."

"You gave me your sugar ration. Every time we had coffee. For that whole year of active missions." Steve's eyes were soft. The coffee was half-gone.

"It wasn't hard. And…" Bucky lifted a shoulder. "Honestly? It wasn't a big deal. I got used to it. Don't think I could go back to having coffee _with_ sugar, now."

"Thanks."

"Just looking after the Captain. It's what we do."

Steve caught the plural. He frowned. "The guys knew?"

"They didn't just _know,_ they aided and abetted. Jones and Dernier alternated with half-rations to give you a top-up. Morita and Falsworth wouldn't give up their sugar for anyone but they were sympathetic and helped in other ways, and Dugan — okay, he genuinely didn't like the stuff. But it meant there was more for the rest of us."

Steve ducked his head and smiled. "And I never knew."

"You had a command position to worry about. A unit to look after. I don't blame you for not noticing, pal. We weren't flashing neon signs about it."

"Still. Should've seen it."

"You saw me."

"That, I did."

"And you never called me out on it." He'd wondered about that at the time. If Steve had noticed. But Steve had never said anything, not even when it was just the two of them on another scouting jaunt and they had all the privacy in the world, and Bucky had concluded not.

"Bad example," Steve said.

"What?"

"Calling you out, it would have set a bad example. Captain's not supposed to notice everything that goes on in the unit." He peeled a hand from the mug and prodded Bucky in the ribs. "That's what my sergeant's for."

Bucky felt a sneaking smile curl about his mouth. "Rogers, you conniving son of a…"

"Chain of command," Steve murmured.

"That's one I haven't heard before." He leaned over and checked the level in the mug. Empty. Not that he could tell from the shivers. He lifted the mug away and dropped it on the coffee table. "Right. Talk."

"We _are_ talking." Steve's head lolled against his shoulder.

"Why can't you sleep?"

"Can now. Maybe. You're a good pillow."

"Captain, you flatter me." He let the wry tone fade from his voice. "Why couldn't you sleep earlier?"

Steve swallowed. "Too cold."

"Go on."

"I — I don't know, I want to go back, I miss… oh, everyone. You and the boys and Howard and _Peggy…_ and I know you're here, but — " he stopped.

"You miss who I was. Before."

"No!"

"It's alright," Bucky murmured. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, not quite able to look at Steve. Not for this. "I miss me, too."

Steve took a shaky breath. After a minute, he continued: "And I keep thinking: what if I can go back? What if Tony could re-freeze me, what if we could somehow do it? We've got so much technology now, why can't we… But then I think about what it would cost." He shook his head. "And I don't know. I could save hundreds there, but would it mean failing hundreds here? Would it be worth it? Leaving behind everyone here, the team, the _family_ we've built? I — could I leave you behind? I don't think I could."

That was one question answered. Bucky didn't let the slightest flicker of relief show. "And the cold?"

"I can't do it," Steve whispered. His hand curled into Bucky's shirt and clung tight. "I can't stop thinking about it, and it all boils up inside me and freezes solid because I can't face the ice again." Something sick and hollow crossed his face. "I'm a coward."

The shadow of the cryo chamber loomed, dark and desolate. Bucky fought back the instinctual panic, the memory of being naked and freezing and helpless, unable to move, unable to remember.

He couldn't freak out. Steve needed him.

Bucky knew better than most how to control his reactions. He felt a muscle tick in his jaw, but that was all the outward signs Steve would see. "A coward? For not wanting to sleep on ice for another seventy years? I'd call that common sense, pal."

"But if I could save —"

"You can't." Only after he'd said it did Bucky realise he'd slipped into his _Sergeant Barnes Making The C.O. See Sense_ voice _._ "I know you hate being alive when everyone else we knew is dead, _I know,_ Steve. But you can't go back and change the past, and thinking about it all the time? That's not healthy, that's obsession, it's — it's madness."

Steve dropped his head. Paused. Huffed a breath. "Yeah."

"How often does it…?"

"Not that often. Once a year, maybe." He looked back up and shifted his weight, squirming to get comfortable. "Usually passes in a couple of days. It might be less, this time."

"Oh?"

"I didn't have you before."

"Oh." That made sense. Warmth blossomed in his chest. There was a minute of silence, and then Steve yawned again. Bucky nudged him. "Do you think you can sleep now?"

"Mmm."

He made to stand up, but Steve clutched him tighter and mumbled inarticulate protest. And the man was _still_ shivering. Blast.

"Okay." Bucky sighed. "Hold on."  
He snagged the cushion out from behind him and plumped it down at the end of the couch. The black leather sectional was wide enough. They'd made do with far worse in the past.

"You're holding on?"

"Yeah, why — ?"

Bucky braced Steve with his human arm and toppled them sideways to lie lengthwise on the couch. He landed flat on his back, head smacking into the cushion. Right on target. Steve drew a sharp breath, hand clenching, eyes widening; and then he seemed to realise they were safe.

"Warn me next time!"

"Sorry," Bucky said, not entirely sincerely. Time was, Steve's trust in him was so absolute he wouldn't have even flinched at that.

'course, time was Steve hadn't spent seventy years mostly-dead to wake up in a different world, and time was Bucky hadn't tried several times over to murder him.

They were working on the trust issues.

Steve wriggled, ending up half sprawled across Bucky, half tucked into the gap between Bucky and the back of the couch. It was a familiar position. The Barnes house had been far warmer than the Rogers'; in the interests of Steve's health they'd spent winter night after winter night like this when they were kids, curled up in Bucky's narrow bed under mounds of blankets while his sisters slept in the bigger bed across the hall.

And speaking of blankets…

Bucky retrieved the thick blue blanket from where it had fallen to the floor and wrapped it firmly around Steve. He ignored the reflexive noises of protest. "I'm not cold, don't worry about me. Are you warm enough?"

"No." But before Bucky could cast about for another blanket, Steve nestled into the crook of his flesh shoulder, yawned hugely, and mumbled, "But you're like a furnace. I'm warming up already. Give it a minute."

"Alright."

Bucky brushed his fingers against Steve's temple, sweeping ever-so-slightly-sweaty blond hair off his forehead. Hmm. Warm, but not hot. No fever. He wasn't sick; not physically, at any rate. The shivering was settling down.

"I'll be fine, Buck."

Bucky glanced over. Steve's eyes were closed, the frown easing, his hand already loosening from its desperate hold. How had he known…?

"Because I know you. Stop worrying."

The corner of Bucky's mouth twitched. "Yes, sir."

He stretched the metal arm off the side of the couch. Rotated it through a full circle. Took automatic note of how far he could reach, in which directions, with how much force. The German hunting knife, Elsa, was safely tucked into the small of his back. He could have it in hand in less than a second. A triple-set of freshly sharpened throwing knives were strapped to his calf under the sleep trousers. Steve's empty mug sat nearby on the coffee table; it would make a decent weight if he needed a projectile.

And Bucky was on the outside edge of the couch, between Steve and any attempted threat.

He slipped two fingers around Steve's wrist and closed his eyes.

xx xx xx xx xx

A sharp inhale woke him, and then a muffled giggle. Natasha. And… Clint? Yes, there was the second pair of footsteps, not as soft as the first. Both in bare feet. Both trying to be quiet. _Thank you._ They'd been so kind as to wake him before the others made an appearance for breakfast.

Bucky cracked his eyes open and glared across the room to where they stood by the kitchen bench.

He knew without looking that Steve's blanket had slipped down to drape over their tangled legs. Bucky's metal arm curled up around the cushion. His left leg had slipped off the side of the couch, trouser leg riding up to put the sheath of throwing knives on full display. Steve had an arm flung over Bucky's chest, and the patch of red shirt under Steve's chin was the tiniest bit damp.

Not that he would ever tell Steve that.

Nobody told Captain America that he drooled in his sleep and lived to tell the tale.

Nat had her phone out.

Bucky rolled his eyes. Really? A photo would be bad enough. She'd better not be filming them.

She giggled again, louder than before.

Steve shifted in his sleep, head burrowing into Bucky's chest. Bucky narrowed his eyes. Moving slowly, he lifted his metal arm from the pillow, jerked a thumb at Steve, pointed at the two troublemakers, and drew a finger across his throat with exquisite precision.

And grinned.

Natasha paled.

Good. She'd caught the placement of his hypothetical knife slice. If they woke Steve, they wouldn't bleed out nice and swiftly. He hadn't cut the carotid arteries; he'd severed the windpipe.

They would _suffocate._

And with the serrated blade of his hunting knife, it would be no joke.

Alright, yes, it was a joke, and no, he wouldn't really kill the nearest thing to family he'd found in the last seventy five years. But the warning was enough to lower the noise level to something almost sub-decibel.

Excellent.

He rubbed a hand over his face, yawning. Mmm. It had been a good sleep, but there was nothing like cold metal on your eyelids to wake you up. He caught Clint's eye and mouthed, _Time?_

Clint tapped his phone and held it up. _6:18am._

Ugh. He shot them a thumbs-up and closed his eyes.

Ten more minutes.


	2. Chapter 2, Part 1

**I don't own it. If I did, Steve and Bucky would've hugged at least once in CW.**

 **Okay, I've been trying to upload this chapter for the last eight hours (I kid you not) and this is the best I've managed so far, which means... you get a third of a chapter now and the rest later, once the website is working properly. Sorry. I'll try to get it up tomorrow, but no guarantees. Technology is a wonderful thing.**

 **Thanks to my lovely betas and reviewers! You're all magnificent.**

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Chapter Two (Part One)  
Prompt: Dogtag

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The day passed quietly. Bucky kept an eye on Steve as they slid through the comfortable routine of banter and gym sessions and personal projects. By the time they settled in the common room before dinner, the lines of tension around Steve's eyes had vanished. His gaze was clear as ever, untroubled by the shadow of last night, as he sprawled on the couch next to Bucky.

Which was a relief, Bucky had to admit. Nobody knew better than him that there were things you couldn't just beat into submission. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

Steve's state had been about as far from _liking it_ as he'd got in months.

A bare foot landed on Bucky's lap, and then a second foot. The toes wriggled obnoxiously.

Steve didn't look up from whatever he was sketching on his art pad.

Bucky propped his elbows on the makeshift table, bore down with slightly more weight than was strictly necessary, and kept reading his book. Jill had just arrived at the Parliament of Owls. With any luck, he could finish this chapter before the food was ready.

He did. And the chapter after it, too.

They watched a movie later, an animated one that Clint had chosen. Card games followed; when Steve yawned for the seventh time, Bucky pulled him to his feet and called a cheerful goodnight to the rest of the team. Sam and Rhodey looked at each other, looked back at their cards, and slapped down a joint winning hand.

They slipped out amid the ensuing celebrations. At the apartment, Bucky left Steve pottering in the living space and retreated to his bedroom.

Steve wasn't the only tired one. The emotional back-and-forthing last night had worn him out.

It didn't take Bucky long to fall asleep.

xx xx xx xx xx

He knew cold. Freezing, bone-rattling, teeth-chattering cold. And white, a hazy grey-white all around. Too bright, too bright. He lay on his back, staring up at an overcast sky heavy with snow clouds.

He couldn't move.

There was an impression of vast space overhead. A sheer drop — or, or, not a drop? The other one. A height. A great height — to either side.

And the cold. Always the cold.

He'd been here before. Many times.

Bitter failure burned in his chest. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. He didn't know where he was _yes he did_ or why he was here _yes he did yes he did_ but he knew that he'd failed.

Icy needles stabbed him, pinpricks all over, an aching gnawing cold that crept over him like a smothering blanket. His ribs hurt from the blast _what blast_ up above and his left arm was a throbbing screaming mess _but it's gone it's gone it's not there where is it_ of agony _._

He had a headache.

And then Steve was there, broad-shouldered and laughing, clad in his twenty-first century jeans and a t-shirt. And Converse. _Where did you come from you weren't here a second ago._ Bright red Converse.

"Come on, Bucky, don't lie there all day! We've got errands to run."

Steve stretched out a hand and Bucky took it. He floated to his feet as the city of New York in 2020 rose up around them. They were in a park. It had snowed. He'd made a snow angel.

 _Steve why are you wearing a t-shirt it's snowing you're an idiot aren't you cold_

He hovered beside Steve as they wound their way through the city _too tall too narrow not right can't breathe_ and into a coffee shop, where Steve ordered a takeaway box of donuts and cupcakes and pastries, and then two coffees, dine in, one long black with two sugars, one long black with no sugar, thank you very much, how's your day been, nice weather we're having.

 _Steve do you have to make polite conversation with every single human in the world_

Steve slid him a teasing glance, as if he'd heard the thought. But that was ridiculous, Steve couldn't read minds. Never had been able to, except… sometimes. With Bucky. He just knew.

They sat at a table in the middle of the shop _why is the table in the middle_ as people laughed and chatted all around them _we never sit in the middle of a room it's the least defensible position ever invented._ Bucky didn't try to parse the babble of conversations, didn't try to listen to the general incoherence. Didn't try to talk, to ask Steve why, of all the available tables, they'd chosen this one.

He'd been here before. The conversations never made sense and his mouth wouldn't open.

Something pressed down on his lower face, a mask or a muzzle or the memory of a muzzle. He flinched.

Steve didn't notice.

The lady in the seat behind him trilled something in gibberish and burst out laughing. Her companion laughed too, harsh and raucous.

The server brought their coffees. Long black two sugars for Steve. Long black no sugar for Bucky. Steve smiled at her _black hair green eyes tattoo on arm newly washed shirt with cat claw marks_ and sipped his coffee.

"That's excellent, thank you."

"You're very welcome." Her gaze turned to Bucky —

— and whatever word she said was in Russian, always in Russian, but _he could never hear what she actually said_ it dissolved in a burst of static —

and the Asset was across the table, coffees flying away to smash on the ground. His flesh hand was around the target's throat, muffling the pitiful noises the target made as he gasped for breath, and _Bucky screamed on the inside, hammering at the locked bolted welded shut door, no way out no way out_ his metal hand came up in a fist, lashed out, one two three four five…

Blood flew.

The target fought back, trying to get his legs out from under the table, and then when that didn't work, trying to dislocate the Asset's kneecaps with a good kick.

The assassination spot had been well located. There was no leverage to be had.

Customers talked and laughed around them, blank gazes passing over their table as if they saw things like this everyday _maybe they did._ The server smiled and went back to work.

The _no_ target _no no no please_ was weakening, _Steve Steve stop me Steve please I don't I don't want to no_ skin purpling, _don't let me Steve I'm sorry Steve sorry I'm so sorry_ face a mess of blood and bruises and tendons and bone slivers.

 _Bucky screamed and screamed and screamed_

If he had time, the Asset had orders to make this slow, to draw it out, make it last make it _hurt._ But the target was strong, the target had nearly beaten him before _fight Steve please_ so he didn't have time. Even half over the table, he had a better position than the target; he broke the target's knee with a kick, grabbed the shoulder joint, twisted until the arm cracked and lay limp.

 _Steve screamed Bucky screamed_

The target's eyes rolled up, lashes fluttering, but he had to be awake, those were the orders, he had to be awake, he had to know _who —_

The Asset reached for a mask that wasn't there and discarded it _pleading eyes bulging veins rasping air Bucky please Steve don't Steve stop me Bucky Bucky Bucky_ and gripped the target's chin, drew his head around to meet the Asset's eyes. Laid his flesh hand to the target's face, down the neck, around the throat _make it slow make it hurt no SteveSteveSteve_ and

brace

and

snap.

The target jerked and slumped in his seat. Head sinking down onto the table. Neck twisted. Eyes lifeless _dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead_

 _dead dead dead_

 _dead dead_

 _dead_

 _dead_

 _dead_

The Asset rose to his feet and stared down at the empty shell of his greatest enemy

 _and Bucky screamed._

 _xx xx xx xx xx_

Bucky bolted upright, tangled in sheets, panting for air. He cut the scream off as he became aware of it. Braced in anticipation of the slap. Remembered. He wasn't there, he wasn't, he was here and home and safe —

Too hot in here, even without a shirt on. Perils of the overpowered metabolism. Sweat. Everywhere.

 _Steve._

The sound that left his lips wasn't another scream. It was a sob, choked and strangled. He rolled and reached for his phone. The screen lit up as he retrieved it from the nightstand.

Steve: _You okay?_

He must have heard the noise from across the hall. The screen blurred. Bucky wiped away tears and stabbed out a reply with shaking fingers.

Bucky: _No._

The nausea caught him. He flew to the bathroom and collapsed in front of the toilet bowl, heaving and shuddering and heaving again. He'd killed Steve. It wasn't real. He'd killed Steve. It was just a dream. It wasn't — it wasn't —

He groaned. Shoved his hands through his hair. Retched again.

Yes, it was a dream.

No, it wasn't real.

But it could be.

Snot and tears mingled as they ran down his face. He could hardly breathe past the lump in his throat.

It could be.

There was nothing in his stomach left to vomit up. He rested his forehead against cold porcelain and concentrated on breathing. One shuddering breath in. His bones were vibrating so hard they felt like they were going to pierce his skin. One shuddering breath out. His insides were a tangled lump of pain, nausea roiling, acid burning, anguish sapping his energy.

He could stay here forever.

Never have to face —

"Hey, Buck. What's up?"

Steve.

The voice caught at his heartstrings, pulled them painfully tight. Searing fire blazed down into his gut.

Bucky moved his head a few inches and vomited bile. The tears were back. And the snot. He ran a hand under his nose and grimaced.

"Bucky, Bucky, hey, it's okay, it's going to be okay — "

A hand brushed Bucky's shoulder. Steve's hand. The touch burned. Bucky flinched and twisted away, scuttling back until he was pressed against the wall beside the toilet, knees to his chest. " _Don't._ "

Steve stopped, his hand in mid air. A worried crease appeared between his brows. "Okay. Sorry."

"Don't — don't touch me. Please."

Very slowly, the hand lowered to flex uselessly at Steve's side. "Okay." His eyes narrowed, gaze falling to Bucky's bare feet and then rising again: up the pyjama-clad legs, over the heaving chest, the shoulders gleaming with sweat, and up to Bucky's face. Whatever he saw there, he didn't look happy about it.

Bucky looked away. "Sorry," he muttered.

"It's okay."

"I just — I can't trust myself. With you. Contact. It's — it's not — " The dream rose, dark and ugly: Steve's eyes staring up at him, begging, and Bucky punching him. Fast. Hard. Merciless. _Brutal._ The bruises. The blood, red and wet. He started, and his gaze falling on his metal hand, curled in a tight fist. _No._ No, no, not here.

"Bucky. Breathe."

He set his teeth and prised the fist open. Every micro-movement took a gargantuan effort. Every second stretched into an hour. But he managed it. He dropped his hand to splay on the cool floor, fingers digging in to the crevices between tiles, desperate for grounding. His breath was coming too fast, chest heaving with the effort of dragging in oxygen, and it still wasn't enough. His ribs tightened like a iron band, clamping down and down and _down._ His fingers twitched, hands shaking, eyes flickering from the floor to the wall to the toilet to his metal hand, coming to rest on anything but Steve before moving off again.

" _Breathe,_ " Steve said again.

Bucky knew that tone. It was an order.

He buried his head in his knees and groaned. Inhale. Hold, two, three. Exhale. Again. Two. Three. And out. Two Three.

"That's it, Buck. Just breathe. In… and out. Good. Do it again for me, come on…"

After a few minutes, Bucky felt his breathing settle almost back to normal. He blinked, lashes dragging against the flannel of his pyjamas, and stared at the chink of light between his knees.

His cheeks felt hot.

"Bucky? You with me?"

He grunted. In the absence of words, that would do. He couldn't bring himself to lift his head. Not just yet.

But in the interests of making sure Steve was actually there and it wasn't his stupid head playing tricks on him… Bucky lifted a hand and let it flop bonelessly in Steve's general direction.

Footsteps. Bare feet on tile. Quiet, but not as quiet as he knew Steve could be. Steve was making sure Bucky heard him move.

"Can I — ?"

Bucky grunted again in the affirmative.

And twitched his fingers for good measure.

Steve let out a barely-there sigh. Worried. Trying not to show it. A second later his hand covered Bucky's, strong and warm. Even after all these years, it was a little bigger than Bucky was expecting.

Something inside him eased at the contact.

"Have you grown again?" Bucky asked.

"No." Steve had rolled his eyes, Bucky could tell without looking. "I have _not_ grown again, and you know it, you punk."

Bucky grinned, and then the grin wobbled and slid off his face to curl in a miserable ball on the floor. He sucked in air through his nose. Swallowed. "You're not hurt?"

"I'm not hurt." Steve didn't ask why he was asking. Probably didn't need to ask. Nightmares and the aftermath were fairly obvious. He added after a minute, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Alright."

"But… I should." Bucky's hand shook. He grasped Steve's hand tighter and tried to keep his voice steady. "You need to be prepared."

"It was a dream, Buck." Oh. Lovely. Steve was using his Captain America The Calm And Rational voice. "Just a dream. Whatever it is, I doubt it's going to happen in real life."

"You don't know that."

"Well, why don't you tell me about it, hm? And we can decide then if it's likely to be a threat or not. Do you want a hug, would that help?"

Always thinking with your heart, Steve. "We're not kids anymore."

" _Yes, Steve, I would love a hug, thank you so much for asking._ "

"Jerk." Bucky lifted his head and glared half-heartedly at his best friend. He took in the details automatically: bare feet, sweatpants, a faded t-shirt.

And a truly awe-inspiring case of bedhead. Despite himself, Bucky felt his lips twitch.

"Hey," said Steve, "you can't say that, that's childish. And _you're_ the one who so intelligently informed me that we're not kids anymore." He sobered. "You look like hell, Buck. Can you blame me for wanting to help?"

Looking at those harrowed blue eyes, Bucky couldn't blame him for anything on earth. "No."

"Do you want a hug?"

"Yes."

"Come here."

Pressed against Steve's side, warm arms wrapped around him, Bucky rested his forehead on Steve's shoulder and said, "You're still a jerk."

"I know, pal." A sigh whistled over his head. "It's my cross to bear. Now talk. What's gotten twisted up in that head of yours this time?"

"There's a failsafe. This — all this — us, the team, normality, in my head it's all part of the failsafe, part of the backup plan. They know about it, they designed it this way. Designed _me_ this way. And they're out there. Waiting."

"Tell me about the dream."

Bucky closed his eyes. "We were — we were at the park."

Silence. A gentle hand combed through his hair, smoothing the tangled strands.

"I don't know which one. Just… a park. Somewhere in the city. It was cold. Snowing. There were a few inches of snow on the ground already."

Pat. Smooth. Detangle.

"You said we had errands to run..."


	3. Chapter 2, Part 2

**I don't own it.**

 **Thanks to reviewer Qweb for confirming the upload problem. The system seems to be having trouble with anything over 3,000 words. So it looks like you're getting chapters split into less-than-3k chunks until it's fixed. Anyone else having that issue? And has anyone logged it with the admins? (Is there even a way to report a problem? I don't know.)**

 **IMPORTANT NOTE: Please go back and read the last chapter again. I added another thousand+ words at the end of the dream scene to make the second half of Chapter 2 fit here.**

 **Thanks!**

* * *

"Don't know what errands. Ended up at a cafe halfway across town — it seemed like a long walk, but you know how dreams are. The city was wrong, everything was too high, the streets were too narrow. I could hardly breathe, it was… claustrophobic." Bucky shuddered.

The hand dropped to knead his back. Steve excelled at listening.

"You got a takeaway box of pastries and things. Waitress brought our coffees over." He wrapped his arms around himself and burrowed deeper into Steve. Took a deep breath. Fought for clarity. "She — " The words wouldn't come. A garbled noise of frustration left him, and then something like a sob.

"It's okay," Steve murmured. His hand rubbed firm circles between his shoulder blades, short nails scritching at that one itchy spot of scarring that Bucky could never reach. "Take your time. Breathe. There's no rush."

He'd made it this far. He couldn't stop now. "She — um. She triggered me. Triggered the Asset — the Winter Soldier." Had he told Steve about this dream before? He couldn't remember. "I've had the dream before, I think; I could sort of remember bits of it as I went along. I know she triggers me in Russian. I — I never hear what she says. She's standing right next to me, and I can never — " He ground his teeth. "Never make out what she says. It's in Russian, it's a single word in Russian, no accent, she's fluent enough to pass for a native, and I don't know what she says. It's like… a cloud of static."

Rub. Scratch.

"So I was there, and you were there, and — and the standing orders were there. You tried to fight, but… it never… you couldn't… we picked the spot too well, you didn't have any leverage, you couldn't get out from behind the table and I was too strong — "

"Breathe." Scratch. Pat.

"I killed you." Bucky's voice rose to a high-pitched whine. His breath came heavy, sobs catching in his throat. "I couldn't stop. I was there, screaming and hammering to get back into my own mind, and… I couldn't. I couldn't do anything. I just — watched — while you were beaten to a bloody pulp. Nobody else in the cafe noticed, they talked and laughed like they couldn't even see what was happening. The waitress went back to work. It was just us. Just me. Killing you."

Pat. Rub. Detangle. Smooth.

"Snapped your neck. Orders were to make it slow, make it hurt you… I had to take the mask off, let you see… but I couldn't. I snapped it. Quick and clean."

Bucky's tears were soaking through the thin t-shirt. Steve didn't make a sound.

"It's the failsafe," Bucky whispered. "All this, me, _after._ I thought — in Wakanda — the cryo had finally… but it's a lie. It's them. It's always them. They're still — still — " Tears choked him. He turned his head into Steve's neck, clung to him with shaking hands, and cried.

Steve cupped the back of his head with a gentle hand. Dropped his cheek to Bucky's shoulder. Bucky felt the soft scrape of lashes; and then, like gently falling rain, the splash of salty tears.

"Sorry," Bucky murmured. His heart ached. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"Just a dream," Steve whispered, voice choked.

"But what if it's not?"

"It is. It was. Just a dream."

"But — "

"Don't."

Bucky snapped his mouth shut. "Sorry," he said again.

"Don't apologise. Don't ever apologise for this. Nightmares, trauma… they're not something we can control." Pause. "Much."

A noise, rusted and strangled, left Bucky's mouth. It took him a moment to recognise it as a laugh. "Not much _,_ no."

He felt Steve's mouth curl in an answering smile against his bare shoulder. Bucky closed his eyes and breathed, concentrating on the hiss of oxygen in his lungs, the steady _th-thump, th-thump_ of Steve's heartbeat beneath his ear, the rise and fall of his chest — of both their chests.

He breathed and felt Steve breathe, alive, alive, alive…

Steve stirred. "Ready to move?"

"No." Never.

And settled. "Okay."

A long time later, Steve lifted his head. "My butt's numb."

"Mmmph."

"And I'm getting cramp in my leg."

"I thought Erskine's serum was supposed to make you tough or something."

"Something. Yes. Definitely something."

Bucky sighed, and then grinned as Steve jumped. "Did that tickle?"

"Not. At. All."

"Good." He groaned and drew back, keeping his eyes averted. He felt strangely reluctant to meet Steve's gaze. "Fine. You and your cramping leg win this round."

"Bucky."

"Yeah?"

"Look at me?"

Bucky's gut clenched. Strange, that. Phrasing it as a question instead of an order made him feel almost guilty. He tried to keep his voice light. "Just been crying on your shoulder, pal. Why would I want to look at your ugly mug, too?"

"Please."

Well. If he put it like that… Bucky lifted his head to meet Steve's eyes.

And flinched, breath stuttering, as the Steve from the dream intruded, interposing itself between them.

"Hey," Steve said. He gripped Bucky's shoulders hard, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. "It's okay, it's okay, it's not real. Whatever you're seeing, it's — not — real."

"Looks real enough." Bucky's lips felt numb. He watched in horrified fascination as a sliver of bruised skin sloughed free and drifted away.

Steve's hold tightened. "You feel that?"

"Yeah."

"That's not the grip of a dead man."

"I broke your arm. Snapped it at the shoulder." He gulped air. Bit back a moan as Steve leant closer, one eye swollen shut, the other a bloodshot mess.

"Hey," he said. "Look at me."

"I _am_ looking at you."

"No, you're looking at the dream. Look at _me._ "

Air. There wasn't enough air in here. Bucky lifted a trembling hand, searched for the least damaged spot, and gingerly touched the bleeding scrape at Steve's temple.

The skin felt smooth. Undamaged.

He closed his eyes tight, willing himself to focus, trying to reconcile touch and sight.

"That's it," Steve whispered. "You haven't hurt me. Nobody's hurt me. I'm right here."

"Y-you're using both hands."

"That's right."

"And… " He frowned, probing with cautious fingers down Steve's cheek to his chin. "Your skin feels fine. No swelling or bruises. No b-blood. The jaw — it's not — it's not broken."

"Can't talk with a broken jawbone, can I?"

"I shattered it. It — it was _pulp._ "

"Wasn't you. Wasn't me. Didn't happen."

He shuddered. "Happened." Opened his eyes and saw Steven Grant Rogers, whole and undamaged. "In my head. It happened in my head."

"You with me?"

"I'm with you."

Steve let out a slow breath. His shoulders slumped. "Excellent."

Bucky ran a hand over his face. "Sorry."

"Don't apo — "

"For scaring you."

Steve stopped. Looked away. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Apology accepted. Now shut up."

"Yessir."

They stumbled out to the bedroom. Bucky saw the time on the alarm clock, groaned, and collapsed full-length on top of the rumpled covers.

"What?" Steve asked.

"It's five thirty. In the morning."

Steve leaned around him, looked at the clock, and raised his eyebrows. "So it is."

"I should be asleep _._ "

"Probably."

He made an incoherent sound that Steve must have interpreted as _I hate mornings,_ because he laughed. "It's not that early."

"Is too."

"You don't want to come for a run with me?"

"Ha. Ha."

Steve's smile faded. "Can you sleep now, do you think?"

Bucky rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. "I — don't know."

"What's the problem?"

"It's still pretty messed up. In here." He tapped his head. "I know I didn't — it, it wasn't me. But it could be."

Steve frowned. "Could be what?"

"Me. That. It could still happen."

"You beat the brainwashing."

"I beat that particular set of conditioned responses, yes. It doesn't mean there aren't more buried deep down, just waiting for the right trigger."

"No." His hands came up to cradle Bucky's temples. "Listen to me. Hydra's gone. _Gone,_ okay? There's nothing there in your head. Nothing left to be triggered."

Bucky sat up, pushing the hands away. "I — " He broke off with a groan and dropped his head into his hands. "I thought I was done with all that. With all the stupid, _stupid_ brainwashing stuff. The Hydra stuff."

"You _are_ done with it."

"I'm not. Quite apart from the seven decades of blood on my hands — " His chest hurt. "I'm not, Steve, I can't ever be done with it. Because what if I'm right, what if there is a failsafe, what if all this — " he waved a hand wildly around the room — "is just another mask that Hydra strapped on me without my consent? One day it'll come off." His chin wobbled treacherously. He clamped it tight. "One day I might — "

" _Don't._ " The word was whisper-soft and hard as steel. "Don't say it. You can't torture yourself like that."

 _Yes, I can._ Bucky saw the glint in Steve's eye and stopped the words before they left his mouth.

"You think you're the only one who thinks like that? It took Clint weeks after the Loki thing to look us in the eye again. Anytime he walked into a room, he'd stand next to Nat, or between Thor and me. People who had the best chance of fighting him. He kept to the ground instead of perching up high, he never took his bow anywhere, he stopped carrying knives — "

Bucky thought of the throwing knives strapped to his calf and felt sick.

"And it was all to make it _easier for us_. If he turned, he wanted to be taken down quickly. He didn't want to hurt anyone."

"I know," Bucky said hoarsely. "He — he told me."

Steve shoved his hands into his pockets and frowned down at Bucky.

After three minutes of the most concentrated staring Bucky had ever experienced — from the receiving end, at least — he wriggled uncomfortably. "What?"

"Thinking," said Steve.

"That's a first."

The corner of his mouth lifted. The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Am I right in thinking that you don't want to forget?"

Ice seared Bucky's chest. For a moment he was back in the cryo chamber, unmoving, his mind as naked as his body. A blank slate waiting for a chalk mark. A starved puppy, slavering and pitiful, desperate for attention. All instinct and trained skill and a yearning for touch that even the mind wipes couldn't get rid of. The handlers said _go_ and he went; they said _stop_ and he stopped; they said _eliminate the target_ and he murdered a person in cold blood.

He hadn't hated it. He hadn't known what hate was.

He couldn't go back to that.

He _couldn't._

Bucky clenched his jaw and fought back the wave of sheer terror that threatened to swamp him. Steve's hand tightened on his wrist. When had he reached out? It didn't matter. Bucky clutched the lifeline, white-knuckled and shaking.

"Yeah," he rasped. "You're right. In thinking that."

"Thought so."

Bucky shivered. He concentrated on the pressure of Steve's thumb as it rubbed tiny circles on his skin. Around, around, around, not regular as clockwork but regular as anyone susceptible to human error. The circles weren't perfect, the pattern never quite the same, the flow of pressure dynamic instead of static.

Human. So human.

The panic receded.

"Will you be alright for a minute by yourself?" Steve asked softly.

"I am an adult."

"An adult who's been through more trauma than anyone else I know. Who's just been vomiting his guts up because of a horrific nightmare. You don't have to be strong all the time. God knows _I'm_ not."

"I'll be fine."

"Okay." One final squeeze, and then he let go. "Back in a minute."

The door closed behind Steve. Bucky swung his legs over the side of the bed and propped his elbows on his knees. His boots stared at him from two feet away, laces trailing across the hardwood floor. He'd left them out last night. Sloppy. He should put them away before someone tripped over them.

His hand felt cold.

He didn't move.

"Bucky."

"Mm?" Bucky blinked. Oh. Steve was back. "Yeah, what?"

Steve sat beside him and took a quick breath. Nervous. Why would Steve Rogers be nervous? "Here." He dropped something into Bucky's hand. It clinked. Metal. "Mine were still on me when they dug me out, but the ice hadn't done them much good. And yours… I don't know where they are. In some Hydra lockbox, probably. Or long gone at the bottom of a ravine in the Swiss Alps. Had to get new ones made, anyway, so I figured I might as well make a couple of changes, update them properly, you know…" He was still talking, but the sound faded as Bucky opened his hand.

Nestled in his palm were a set of World War II dogtags.

 _James B Barnes_

 _32557038 T42 43 A_

 _Natasha A Romanoff_

 _Avengers Facility_

 _New York P_

They felt cold in his hand, cold and solid. He closed his eyes and ran a fingertip over them. Traced the stamped letters. Hefted them, noted the gauge of the metal, the small weight, the slim edge.

So light. But so heavy at the same time. They burned like fire in his mind.

"You okay?" Steve's voice came from far away. "I wasn't sure if they'd help or not, to be honest. You don't have to keep them, I don't — I don't want to send you into flashbacks every time you look at them. But with the updated details… I thought they might help you remember. Us. The team. Everything good that's happened since you dragged me out of the Potomac."

"They're perfect." Bucky dragged his gaze from the tags and met Steve's eyes, blinking back tears. "They're _perfect,_ Steve. Thank you."

"Well. Good. I'd hoped… yeah. That's good."

"But why's Natasha my next of kin? I would've thought — "

"Me?"

"Yeah."

"Because I'll be with you, pal." Steve grinned, but his eyes were deadly serious. "Whatever happens, if it's bad enough that the next of kin needs to be informed… I'll be right there with you."

"I — thank you." Bucky nodded to the second set of dogtags, still sitting in Steve's hand. "Guess those are yours?"

"Yeah."

"Who's your N.O.K.?"

"Do me a favour?"

Even Steve couldn't make him blindly agree to an unstated request. "Depends."

"Take a look at your secondary tag."

Bucky paused. "Why? They're exactly the — "

"Just do it, Buck."

Whatever. He flipped the secondary tag to the top.

And stopped.

Oh.

That explained it.

 _Steven G Rogers_

 _0462362 T42 43 O-_

 _Samuel T Wilson_

 _Avengers Facility_

 _New York C_

"You know you're only meant to give the secondary tag out if the person's dead, right?" Bucky said.

"We died, didn't we? In a manner of speaking."

"Hmm. I'm guessing you've got my secondary?"

"Yep."

"Nat's not your N.O.K?"

Steve looked at Bucky, down at the tag, and back up at Bucky with an air of long-suffering patience.

Bucky rolled his eyes. Leave it to Steve to be a nonverbal smart-mouth. "Why not?"

"Because it's possible one of them might be with us when — _if_ — it happens. Better to — "

"Spread the load."

"That's the one."

Bucky nodded and let himself fall backward to lie on the bed. He slipped the chain around his neck, braced himself for the initial kiss of cold metal on his bare chest, and tucked his hands behind his head. "Clever."

"Nothing's going to happen."

"Still. Better to be prepared."

Steve put his own dogtags on. A moment later the bed sank and a messy blond head adopted his upper abdomen as a pillow. "Will they help?"

"They're helping already." They hardly weighed anything, especially compared to Steve's solid weight, but it was enough that he noticed them. After a minute the metal warmed to match his body temperature. There. Just like old times. Noticeable enough to be a constant reminder; not noticeable enough to be distracting.

Funny how, even decades after the war, the feel of them was as natural as breathing.

He couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face. "Thanks."

"You said —" Steve yawned — "that already."

"Because it's true, you blockhead."

"Okay."

Silence. Bucky glanced down at Steve and saw his eyes were closed. "You're not going for a run?"

"Mm. Not right now."

"What happened to _it's not that early, Bucky, stop sleeping and come for some horrible early morning exercise with me?_ Is Captain America losing his motivation?"

"Shuddup."

"Make me."

Steve took a breath. Thought for a minute. And let the breath out. "Nope. Too much effort."

"Are you going to sleep?"

"Mm-mm. Just resting for a bit. It's been a long… morning."

Well. Bucky supposed that was a fair call. "Okay."

They were still resting twenty minutes later when the warning chime for the outside door sounded. Bucky blinked up at the ceiling and frowned. Who'd visit at this absurd hour of the morning?

Maybe it was whichever unlucky sod Steve had picked for a running partner this week.

Bucky was just glad it wasn't him.

He heard a knock across the hall. It sounded hollower than usual. Steve must have left his door open.

Silence.

And then Bucky's door opened and Tony Stark swirled inside like a hurricane.

"Hey, Barnes, have you seen Cap? He's not in his —" He took them in at a glance. One eyebrow lifted. His mouth changed course between breaths. "Good, you're here. Suit up, both of you. We've got a call out."

Steve bolted upright. "A mission? Where?"

"Atlanta." Tony grinned, eyes gleaming. "Mad scientist, apparently. Killer rabbits. Maybe _venomous_ killer rabbits."

"What — " Bucky started.

"Suit up," Tony said again. "We can play Twenty Questions on the way. I need to grab the others, we're in the air in fifteen. Meet at the jet pad. Move!"


	4. Chapter 3, Part 1

**I don't own it.**

 **I was planning a once-a-week update schedule, but the 3k chapter limit has scuppered that plan. So you'll get one _chapter_ a week, more or less, but it'll be split into two or three sections, depending on the size of the chapter. So basically you'll actually get two chapters a week, maybe three. Yay!**

 **Thank you to everyone who has reviewed! You're awesome.**

* * *

Chapter Three, Part One  
Prompt: Rabbit

* * *

As soon as Tony had gone, Steve dashed for his room. Bucky noticed he left the doors wide open.

"Are you coming?" Steve yelled from the other side of the hall.

Already halfway through pulling a thick pair of tactical trousers on, Bucky rolled his eyes. "No, I'm going back to sleep!"

"Really?"

 _Rogers, you idiot._ "Yeah. Planning to sleep in until eleven, have a nice late brunch with Bruce, maybe fit in an easy session at the gym before you lot arrive back all sweaty and injured. Sounds like a great day to me." Bucky slipped into an skintight UnderArmour tank top — which featured a) sweat-wicking breathable fabric on the inside, and b) panels of ultra-lightweight, super-supple body armour after Tony had bought the company last year — and tucked his dogtags neatly under it. The left arm rotation was automatic. He nodded. Full range of movement, good.

Steve appeared in the doorway, dressed in his uniform trousers. He balanced on one foot to slip his socks on. "You don't have to come if you don't feel up to it."

"Shut up, Steve." Bucky pulled his boots on and left them unstrapped while he threw the wardrobe door open. Hmm. Which black jacket did he feel like wearing today?

Ah, choice. Choice was a wonderful thing to have.

"I mean it. No-one would blame you after the night you had."

"What do you want me to do, mope around here and wallow in my self-pity while you're out saving the world again? Do the vacuuming, maybe polish the floor? Have a home cooked meal ready for you when you get back?"

Steve strapped his boots shut. "I guess that's a no."

"Good guess, pal."

Steve rolled his eyes and turned away to grab a shirt.

Black jacket, black jacket, hmm, black jacket…

"That one," said Steve, as Bucky reached for one almost at random. "No. Left. _Left._ Yeah, that one."

Mid-weight. Hooded. Plenty of pockets. All his clothes had plenty of those. And of course the ubiquitous missing left sleeve; stealth was all very well, but the last thing he wanted in a fight was to be hobbled by fashion. "You sure?"

"Atlanta will be warmer than New York."

"True." Bucky slipped the jacket on and ran through the reflexive arm stretches. No issues there. Now. Weapons. "We'll go past the armoury on our way, right?"

"Yeah."

He grabbed a few of his favourite knives anyway. The triple-set of throwing knives, Kirk, Spock, and Bones, he'd already moved to the outside of his left calf. Elsa clipped onto the belt loop at the small of his back. The twins in blued damascus steel, Fred and George, went into the forearm sheaths built into his jacket. "Ready?"

There was a grunt from Steve's room. A second later he appeared, uniform jacket hanging loose, harness and shield safely in place. His helmet was strapped to his bag. "Yeah, ready."

Nat was already in the armoury, checking her gear with clinical precision. "Took your time, boys," she murmured as they walked in.

"Steve wanted to detour past the kitchen," Bucky said. "The poor boy can't manage without his breakfast." Which reminded him, his mouth probably stank of vomit. He slipped a bit of peppermint gum from his bag and popped it in his mouth.

An open hand appeared in front of his nose, palm up. Bucky dropped a second bit of gum into it, and it snaked away.

"Who've we got?" Steve asked, perching on a bench. Shield and fists, that was his way. As far as weaponry went, he rarely took more than a single handgun or a knife. If he needed more than that in the field, he'd beg, borrow, or steal — usually from Bucky.

"Stark. You two. Thunderboy. Clint."

Bucky crossed to the gun wall. His choice of guns didn't change much: he usually took one rifle with a shoulder sling and a pistol on his hip. But which did he want today, assault rifle or sniper rifle?

"How much space are we likely to have?" he asked. "Any idea? Fixed locations?"

"Inner city. Fairly close confines. Beyond that, we don't know. Stark's working on the schematics now."

Not far enough for sniping to be much use, then. Sounded more like a melee. And if Clint was coming, that was their long distance shooting covered in any case. Bucky grabbed an assault rifle, checked it over, and slung the strap over his shoulder. A pistol didn't take more than a second to decide on. He chose his standard, a Heckler & Koch USP Tactical 9mm, checked it, and stowed it on his hip. A belt and ammo came next.

That done, he turned to the knife drawers and grinned. _Hello, my lovelies…_

His hands shot out, selecting and stowing in a blur of movement. One and two and three and four… or… hmm… no. Not four. That was just enough weight on the wrong side to unbalance him a smidgen. Number four went back in the drawer.

"Steve. What do you want?"

Bucky's hand was already hovering when Steve said, "Carter."

He grabbed Elsa's slimmer sister and tossed it behind him without looking. "Heads."

"Thanks. You done?"

"Just about." He took a second for a mental count-up. That should be all. But he felt like he was missing something.

His gaze snagged on something at the back of the drawer. What was that?

Oh. _Yes._

It looked like a distant cousin to Elsa, long and wickedly sharp. More of a machete than a knife, but with far more elegance. "Hello, Leisl," he whispered, and inspected it carefully. "Yes, you'll do nicely."

"Barnes," said Natasha. "When you're finished sweet-talking your weapon…? We need to go."

Leisl fit perfectly at his right thigh, a counterbalance to the weight of the pistol at his left hip. Short enough to not get in the way of any manoeuvres. Long enough to provide more reach than Elsa. And with the clink of metal under his shirt, the echoing burning reminder in his mind… yeah, that felt like coming home after a _long_ time away.

He rather thought he might adopt Leisl after this mission.

"Yeah, ready. Sorry." Knives, rifle, pistol, that was everything he'd needed from here. Gun slung over his shoulder and bag in his hand, Bucky followed Nat out the door, Steve at his side.

The others were waiting for them at the jet.

"About time," Tony groused from the cockpit as they strode up the ramp. "What, did you swing past McDonald's on your way? Got held up in the drive-through?"

"Cool it," Bucky said. "It's been…" he checked his phone… "fourteen minutes since you woke us up. We're in time."

"And you've stolen half my armoury."

Natasha snorted. "It doesn't belong to you."

Clint, nodding off in a side-seat, spoke without opening his eyes. "Yeah, Fury pays the bills round here. Deep pockets, that guy."

"Alright, alright." Tony rolled his eyes. "But I designed — helped design — I, uh, I picked out some of that stuff."

"Matter of fact, Stark," Bucky said, "your dad made something very similar to this one." He patted Leisl. "Might even be the same one."

Tony sat up, eyes alight. "I knew he'd designed something like it. Didn't know how close I'd got the balance of it, though. His notes were a bit… patchy."

Steve and Bucky grinned at each other, but before they could say anything, Thor spoke up from the copilot's seat. "We should be on our way, friends. The transmissions coming through from the south do not sound promising."

"Oh, right. Yes. Coordinates coming through now…"

They stowed bags in lockers, strapped in, and were soon in the air heading south. Nat sat next to Clint and copied his resting-my-eyes pose. Thor pulled out a book. Tony busied himself at the controls, hands fluttering from one panel to the next, pulling up and discarding information so fast Bucky wondered if he was even absorbing any of it.

"Here." Steve nudged him and held out a nutrient bar.

He was eating _again?_ Bucky smirked. "You want me to open it for you?"

"I want you to eat it."

"I'm fine without. Thanks."

"Bucky."

"That's my name, don't wear it out."

Steve stared at him blankly.

"The eighties," Bucky said.

Still no reaction.

Oh. "I forgot, you were asleep then. Don't worry."

"I won't." Steve waved the bar at him again. "Eat. You can't fight on an empty stomach."

"I can. And have done, many times, actually. Some of us don't need eight meals a day just to maintain our body weight, you know. Skipping breakfast won't kill me."

"Skipping breakfast right before a mission, when you were vomiting your guts up an hour ago?" Steve's chin tilted up in a movement that looked eerily familiar. Bucky couldn't quite place it. "I can't see any way that might go wrong."

He rolled his eyes. Snatched the bar, tore the wrapper off, and shoved it whole into his mouth. Mmm. Chocolate. "There," he mumbled, and grinned at Steve's disgusted grimace. "Happy now, _Rebecca_?"

"I'm not your sister."

"You're acting like her."

"Don't talk with your mouth full."

"Case," Bucky said, deliberately opening his mouth as wide as he could. "In. Point." He chewed and swallowed. "There. I've eaten it."

Steve's hand waved again, palm up, this time proffering an apple.

Bucky shot him a long look. "You're not going to stop, are you?"

"No."

Across the cabin, Nat snorted a laugh while Clint manifested an unforeseen ability to grin widely while fast asleep.

Bucky took the apple. And the second nutrient bar. And then the third nutrient bar, which he stuffed into a pocket when Steve wasn't looking.

At the controls, Tony's eyes flickered back to look at them before facing forward again. His hands tapped on the desk.

"Tony," Steve said. "What is it?"

"I don't mean to interrupt your little Breakfast Club thing. I mean, you've got the goth, the prep, the stoner…"

Clint flipped him off.

"Oh, right, not since Cooper was born. You did say that, didn't you? Yeah." He drummed an erratic beat on the edge of the console. Spun to face them fully. Took a breath, held it for a few seconds, and finally let it out in rush. "Barnes."

Bucky crunched a mouthful of apple. "Stark."

"You, uh, you said — my dad — made the prototype for that knife?"

Unexpectedly, Bucky felt a flash of sympathy. After Wakanda, they'd done the sorry-for-murdering-your-parents-when-I-was-brainwashed thing, and the sorry-for-trying-to-kill-you-when-I-found-out thing, and piece by fragile piece had built a working relationship. Stark Junior didn't have it easy, that was for sure. Too many neuroses. He vacillated between holding the memory of his father distant and pulling it close; some days he'd shut Steve down for so much as saying Howard's name, and other days — like today — he snatched at the slightest scrap of information with both hands.

Bucky didn't remember Howard having half so many issues. But then Howard hadn't had… well, _Howard_ … for a father. And there was always a price to be paid when you poured as much as yourself into your work as he had.

That price wasn't necessarily paid by you _._

"Hardly a prototype," Bucky said. "It worked like a charm. Last I heard before the Schnellzug mission, he'd been working on putting them into mass production."

Tony shrugged. "Don't know what happened, but they never got there. Who'd he made it for? He did that, didn't he? Figured out who needed what, specifically, and designed for them? Must've been someone important to get his attention."

Bucky didn't look at Steve. "Yeah. Well. Maybe. He had a lot on — "

A warning chime from the console sounded. Tony swore and spun back to the command desk. "Hold that thought. Sorry. That's, uh, that's new intel coming through…" His eyes widened as he skimmed the message. "Barton. Romanoff. Thor. Listening? Good. Okay, they've managed to cordon off a good chunk of the inner city near the aquarium." His fingers flew across the keyboard. The screen on the wall lit up, showing a data overlay imposed over a top-down satellite feed of the city. A section turned red. "These blocks here. Everyone inside the cordon is in the process of being anti-evacuated, they're getting moved into the nearest safe building and the building is then put in lockdown. Keep the fighting on the streets, we don't want civilian casualties, people."

"No, we do not," Steve said.

"Ground crews have tracked the infestation — "

"What are we," Natasha muttered, "glorified pest control?"

" — to these approximate areas." Six yellow dots appeared inside the cordon.

Bucky assessed the situation at a glance. The yellows were all on different blocks, roughly equidistant around the zone. Six dots. Six of them. That was… strangely coincidental.

"Hey," Clint drawled. "That's one spawn point for each of us."

"Yes, except no." A wave of lighter yellow spread out from each dot until nearly half the red was gone. "That's how far they've spread. At this point in time, anyway. It'll be worse when we get there. And they're venomous."

Steve blinked. "They are?"

"Yes. Venomous killer rabbits. Don't ask me why, I don't know, just because they could, I suppose. And there are… a lot… of them. Atlanta Pest Control could probably handle them if it wasn't for the _venomous_ part, and the army could also probably handle them if it wasn't the _killer rabbit_ part."

"So we get the job," Bucky said.

"Yes."

"How is this our life?"

"Don't look at me, I just run a global engineering company. Venomous killer rabbits are _not_ in my skill set. Making them, I mean, I'm not making them. Killing them, that I can do. Actually, before we go any further, does anyone have an issue with killing cute little furry murderous bunny rabbits?"

Blank silence.

"Glad to hear it, especially seeing as they'd rather eat you than be petted."

"Bit different from the ones at home," Clint said.

The console chimed again. Tony glanced at the display. "ETA ten minutes. Prep up. We'll be coming in hot."

The final few minutes before a mission were always quiet. Out in the field they could talk smack all they wanted, but in the pause before action… no. There was only silence and stillness, and a palpable weight of responsibility. Each mission could be their last, they all knew it. Or a friend's last. It would almost certainly be an enemy's last, whoever he was, whatever he had done or not done to deserve it.

Clint took a folded photo from the inside of his jacket.

Nat checked her stun cuffs with precise movements, frowning into the distance.

Tony's hands were still for once, flat on the desk.

Thor ran calloused fingers over Mjolnir.

Steve bowed his head and closed his eyes.

Bucky slipped the dogtags out from under his shirt. He rubbed a thumb across them and let his vision blur as he settled his mind. He was Bucky Barnes. Not SergeantJamesBuchananBarnes32557038. Still a sergeant, technically, but not _that_ sergeant. This wasn't World War II. He wasn't in Austria. He was Bucky. Not the Asset, the Winter Soldier, the Weapon. He had autonomy. He knew himself. Bucky.

The days after a nightmare were always the worst. He didn't want a slip. Not today.

Not any day.

One by one the team stirred, coming out of those secret mental places they each went to before a battle. Bucky tossed his apple core and absently licked a stray drop of juice from his palm. Gloves, where had he put his gloves. In the bag. Which was in the locker.

By the time he retrieved them and tugged them on, the others were alert once more, bright-eyed and on edge, ready for action.

"Two minutes," Tony said. "Barton, we'll drop you up high and circle back around to the drop point. Give us the lay of the land ASAP. Barnes, find a rooftop, maybe third storey, take the mid range. Cap, Widow, you're on the ground. Thor and I will run interference from the air."

"Got it," Steve said.

"I've got explosives prepped for burning out the source points. Give me a yell once you get close enough and I'll mosey on over." The jet slowed and spun as Clint strode to the tail of the jet, ready for the jump. "Barton. Dropping you on the tower of the Peachtree Plaza building. We'll land in the park to the west. Ready?"

"Ready."


	5. Chapter 3, Part 2

**I don't own it.**

 **Sorry in advance for the cliffhanger... ha.**

* * *

"Ramp dropping in three… two… one."

The ramp lowered. Air swirled inside, warm and humid, and Clint vanished.

"He's away!" Nat called.

The jet banked left, circled a few blocks, and came down to land in Centennial Olympic Park. They piled out.

True to the intel, the streets were deserted. Faces peered down at them from nearby buildings, some curious, some lined with eternal ennui. A few of them smiled and waved. Bucky saw one woman point down, wave excitedly at a coworker, and say something. He read her lips. _The hot one's here._

Really? That was all she could think about at a time like this? Their central city was infested with a plague of killer rabbits — _venomous_ killer rabbits — and _that_ was what was on her mind? Eh, he supposed it was better than panicking. They were here to serve. If that service meant calming the crowds with a nice smiles… it was all part of the job.

Bucky glanced at Steve. Well. At least the civilian had good taste. Steve'd be a good catch for the right woman someday — if he let himself be caught. She would have to be a fine woman indeed to match up to the likes of Peggy Carter.

But right now they had more important things to do.

Like saving the world.

Again.

How the hell was this his life?

He peeled off with Steve, heading north, while Natasha and Thor went west. Stark took off toward the south.

From there it was more or less textbook: find a cluster, take them down, and let Tony know when they found the spawn points so he could come in with his fancy explosives and raze it to the ground. The overgrown rabbits were relentless, but thankfully their reproductive abilities weren't super-powered. By the time the first pit went down fifty-eight minutes in, Tony relayed a tangible difference in yellow on the schematic.

"Uh. Guys," said Nat ten minutes later. "I've found the second pit. It's crawling with Flopsies, and we've got human hostiles as well."

"Flopsies?" asked Thor.

"Humans?" asked Steve.

"Flopsies, you know, like Flopsy, Mopsy, and — never mind. They're rabbits, it's from a children's book. We'll find you a copy later. Yeah, Steve, humans."

"How many?"

"Couple dozen. Some of them are wearing lab coats, some of them have guns. Some of the lab coats have guns."

"Can you take them out?"

"Did I win a cup for first place gymnastics in second grade?"

"Good. Do it. Disarm and disable where you can. We're aiming for nonlethal here, but if they shoot you, feel free to shoot back. Aim for a kneecap or something."

"Got it."

Spawn point number 2 went down in a blaze of fire. Numbers 3 and 4 followed in due course. When their latest block was clear, Bucky came back to ground and strode east with Steve.

"How are we looking, Clint?" Steve asked through the comms channel.

"Busy enough," came the laconic reply. "Turn north, you've got a horde waiting for you a block away by the overpass. Density's gone wild on the readout, it might be a pit. Nat, hang a right. Tony — oh, you found them. Good."

Bucky cast a look at the buildings ahead of them. That one. Eight storeys, flat roof. That would do. He stopped Steve with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm heading up top. That brick one on the right." He pointed. "Give me a few minutes to get on the roof. I'll give you the all clear."

"Roger that."

He took off at a run. Someone must have warned the security guard to be on the lookout; the pedestrian access door of the parking garage swung open as he ran toward it. Saved him having to break it down. He burst in and headed for the stairs.

Ugh. Stairs, stairs, and more stairs. He did _not_ miss the Bucharest apartment.

"Steve, I'm on the roof." He leaned over the east side, saw Steve's head tilted up, and waved an arm. "Heading to north edge now."

"Copy. What's the terrain?"

"You've got to be kidding me. Oh, this is going to be fun… there's some sort of a greenspace straight ahead, it's teeming with them. Parking lot to the left, vehicles there if you need cover or weapons, we'll clear the insurance claims later. Four lane underpass cuts through to the right heading north east. Try to stay clear of that, I can't give you covering fire if you go down there. Seriously, there are hundreds of them. We're not anywhere near the zoo, are we?"

"No zoos around here," Tony said in his ear.

"Aquarium's behind us on the left," said Steve. "And World of Coca Cola. That's about it."

"Right. Just checking." He hadn't bought binoculars. Rifle scope it was. "Hmm. Looks like a pavilion or something in the middle of the greenspace, they could be spawning there. We've got more Mopsies in an empty parking lot down to my right. Swing east when you're done there and we'll clean that up."

"Sounds like a plan. You in position?"

"Ready when you are, pal," Bucky said.

He could hear Steve grinning. "Let's clean up the garden, then."

Steve came out from behind a tree at a run, making a beeline across the deserted highway toward the park. Bucky waited until the first hostiles moved to start shooting, thinning out a path for Steve. He needed to get a good look at that pavilion. It might be their fifth nest.

Sixth nest, he amended as Tony's voice came through the comm.

"I've got a pit here. Nat, Thor, you're closest. Head south and get me a clear line through, would you?"

"On our way," said Natasha.

"Barton."

"Yeah?"

"What are you up to?"

"Clearing out the last of the stragglers from that third nest."

"Head up toward Rogers when you're done there, will you? If they've got the last pit, we can blow this thing and go home."

"Copy that."

Bucky took down a Mopsy that had been sneaking up on Steve's flank. "How are we doing, Steve?"

"Let me get close enough to that pavilion and I'll tell you. Thanks," he added, as the three nearest rabbits fell dead of spontaneous cranial injuries.

He looked clear enough for the moment. Maybe twelve metres out from the pavilion. Twice that many rabbits; Steve could handle them. Bucky fired his last shot of the magazine and took a second to reload, frowning. Surely they hadn't taken out so many already? The place had been crawling when he arrived. They would have had to have killed a couple of hundred to get down to the maybe-thirty that were left. He ran a quick tally, accounting for his spent mags and Steve's shield bashing. Hmm. Theoretically, they might have managed that many, but it was borderline.

Six metres.

"I don't like it, Steve."

"Neither do I, but when you've got to take out venomous killer rabbits, you've got to take out venomous killer rabbits."

"I meant the situation." Bless the army for teaching him how to talk and shoot at the same time. Cottontail and a bunch of cousins lay down for a permanent nap.

"Why's that?"

"Numbers aren't right." He tracked a rabbit behind a car, waited for its head to poke out, and got a clean headshot.

"That's the fifth nest down," Tony said. "Cap, we'll work our way to you two. Get us a confirmation on the pavilion as soon as you can."

"Wilco," Steve said, and grunted.

Bucky's heart leaped. He pulled the scope back to Steve in time to see him snap a rabbit's neck singlehanded. "You alright?"

"It tried to bite me. Got my leg from behind. I felt teeth, but I don't think it punctured skin."

Another four charged headlong out of the pavilion. Abandoning a sinking ship, maybe? Bucky took them down in quick succession. "Rogers, I swear, if you get poisoned from a _rabbit bite_ — "

"Relax, Buck."

Five. SixSeven. "Let us know if you start feeling funny."

"You got it." Two steps brought him to the threshold of the circle. "Guys, this is our sixth pit."

"Right," said Tony. "I'm in the air in thirty seconds. Just cleaning up here."

"I'll take down the roof. That might slow them. Bucky, do you see any human hostiles?"

Bucky scanned the vicinity. "Negative. But that empty parking lot on our east side is crawling with Mopsies still. Stark, what are the odds our intel is wrong and there's a seventh nest?"

"Low."

"How low?" Clint asked.

Tony hummed. "Four — no — six percent."

"That's still a chance."

"A very low chance. Give me a minute and I'll call through to the ground crew, get their latest intel."

"Make it quick," Bucky said through gritted teeth, and hit two rabbits with the same bullet. Were they dead? Yes. Clean shot. Good. The flow of hostiles had slowed almost to a trickle now. Steve's blur of movement was more of a lunge, rest, rest, lunge, bash, breathe, rest.

He should be heaving a sigh of relief and gearing up to head home. But instead he was on edge. And he didn't know why.

He hated not knowing why.

Maybe it was just being this far away from Steve after the bad night. Or maybe it was nervous bleed from the nightmare.

Yeah. That was probably it.

"I'm bringing the roof down," Steve said. Bucky watched as he drove a fist through a wooden support pole, splintering it into two pieces.

"Got your back," Bucky said. He suited the action to the words, taking out a lone Flopsy ten metres away.

Steve worked his way around the pavilion, sticking to the outside edge of the circle. The roof sagged after the first three poles; groaned at the fourth; and gave way completely at the fifth. He took out the last one for good measure, then stepped neatly back and watched as it came crashing down onto the spawn point.

"Roof's down," Steve reported. "That'll slow them until you get here, Stark."

No reply. Tony was probably on another channel talking to the ground crew.

And Bucky's nerves were still screaming at him. "Steve. Do me a favour and don't hang around down there."

"Nervous, Bucky?"

"Yes." He bit the word out, feeling no shame in admitting it. Lives had been saved by wild hunches before.

Steve turned and started jogging back toward the building. "Okay. I'm heading for that parking lot on the east side. Natasha, where are you at?"

"I," said Natasha, "am on my way. Thor got a little sidetracked, he's a few blocks over dealing with a pocket of resistance that we missed on our first sweep. Tony's… I don't know, in the sky somewhere. Talking to his Atlantean friends."

"Roger that. Clint?"

"I'm halfway down this stupid tower. They shut the elevators off — emergency protocol or something — so I have to use the stairs."

Bucky grinned. "I feel your pain."

"Thanks, man."

Steve passed below his position, heading south. Bucky dropped down from the ledge and dog-trotted to the east corner. No, that was no good. Too many trees around the edges of the parking lot, he didn't have a good view. Twenty metres down the east side, he vaulted onto the ledge and drew a bead on the teeming lot. Yeah, that was much better. "Steve, I'm in position on the east side of the complex. Just down from the north corner. Give me a wave when you see me."

After a minute, Steve jogged out into the street, looked up, and waved. "Nice spot."

"I thought so. Parking lot's in front of you. I'd estimate maybe two hundred hostiles, they look pretty docile at the moment but no doubt that'll change once they smell you. They haven't made a move to leave."

"Something's keeping them contained there?"

"Could be."

"Guess we'll find out." Bucky saw the glint of light as Steve spun his shield and resettled it in place on his arm. "I'm going in."

"Got your back."

Bucky's guess had been right. The atmosphere changed as soon as Steve stepped over the garden strip. The rabbits bristled, a wave of heads turning to look at Steve — and they charged.

Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. It wasn't enough to even _begin_ to hold back the tide. He switched to full automatic. Aim. FireFireFireFire —

His gun jammed. Bucky swore and hit the assault rifle with the flat of his hand, hoping to jar it back into action. "My gun's jammed. Sorry. Be with you ASAP. Guys, we could do with a hand here."

"Four blocks out," Nat snapped.

That could be a lifetime too long. Bucky ejected the mag, noted the flawed metal at a glance, and loaded a new one in the space of a single breath. Aim. Firefirefire… "Hurry it up. Where's Stark? I'm back, Steve."

"I noticed," Steve said breathlessly.

Bucky frowned. It wasn't like Steve to be that out of breath, even after the day they'd had. He supposed being ambushed by a couple hundred rabbits intent on ripping your throat out could do it. "You okay?"

"Wouldn't mind the backup."

That was the nearest Steve had come to a confession of weakness in months. "Guys — "

"Shut up," snarled Natasha. "Doing the best we can. Clint's with me, we're on our way. Thor?"

"I am two blocks west of our landing site. There is a man in a white coat being very… uncooperative."

The Flopsies were giving ground, letting Steve carve his way through them toward the centre of the lot. But Steve had seen it: quarter of the way across the lot, he planted his back to a lamppost and stood his ground. Good man.

"Coming up from the south," Tony chimed in. "Sorry. Got held up with some civilians who weren't doing what they were told."

"Bucky."

"Steve, what is it?"

"I'm — " Grunt. Pant. "Right leg's a bit — "

Damn. Maybe that Mopsy had made contact after all. Bucky took out a dozen of the closest rabbits as near Steve as he could aim without risking collateral. With any luck that would buy them a second or two of breathing space. He kept his voice calm. "Take a breath for me. Nice and slow. That's it."

How many rabbits had they taken out? Maybe a hundred. But more were swelling the ranks at the edges of the lot; not fast, but steadily. Either their intel had been wrong and there was a seventh nest, right here, or else dropping the roof on the sixth pit had only agitated the remaining hostiles.

Or both.

He needed to be down there with Steve. But it would take too long, far too long, to dash back across the roof to the stairs, get down eight levels, exit the parking garage on the west side, and come around the complex to the east. He couldn't leave Steve without support for that long.

"Okay," Bucky said. One thing he _could_ control was his voice; it was steady as a rock. "Here's what we're going to do, Steve. We're going to hold this position until one of the others gets here to give you a hand. Once they're here, I can race down to the ground and join you. How does that sound?"

"Good." The word was almost a gasp.

Bucky set his jaw and kept shooting. Eject mag, reload, keep shooting. He could see the pattern to the attacks from up here, each wave rushing forward, breaking, rushing again. Steve was starting to look dangerously swamped down there. Firefirefire. How much ammo did he have left? Not enough to finish the job. The dogtags burned in his mind. Firefirefire.

 _I'll be with you. Whatever it is, we'll be together._

 _Not today, punk._

He cast a calculating look around. No external staircases. What sort of an idiot architect designed a complex this size, with a flat roof, no less, and didn't add any external stairs? Fire hazard, that's what it was. He brought the scope to bear and picked off a Flopsy that was braced to spring at Steve from behind.

"You know, I reckon — " Steve broke off with a agonised gasp.

Through the scope, Bucky saw him stagger. "What? Steve. What's wrong?"

The wordless wet sound he made would lurk in Bucky's nightmares for years.

Steve's legs buckled. He fell, landing hard on his shield side and rolling onto his back. A rabbit was attached to his side, sharp teeth chomping through layers of battle gear like it was cotton candy.

Bucky blasted it off and saw the body splinter into so many bloody parts. But the damage was done.

" _STEVE!_ "


	6. Chapter 4

**I don't own it.**

 **Thank you for the, ah, _reactions_ to the cliffie last chapter. Good to know my writing is doing its job. I would have waited another day or two to put this chapter up, but I couldn't bear to leave you in suspense. Aren't I nice? haha. ****It's okay, you can breathe again. Maybe.**

 **This chapter scraped in under the 3k limit by 10 words!**

 **Here we go... the end of the cliffie... but are we back on safe ground or are we over the edge in free fall?**

 **Read on and find out.**

* * *

 **Chapter Four**

 **Prompt: Fallen**

* * *

The world sharpened, every detail standing out strong and clear. Bucky picked off a rabbit and leapt for the corner of the building. Blasted another hostile as he ran. He'd seen a drainpipe earlier. There. Another shot, fighting to keep space open around Steve as the shield came up to protect Steve's body, shaking, too slow far too slow Steve Steve Steve.

"Barnes," Tony rapped out. "Get down there."

Bucky swung down onto the drainpipe, firing one-handed while his metal hand bore the brunt of an eight-storey vertical slide. "Halfway to ground." Aim. Fire. _You're not killing Steve. Not today._ Despite the reinforced leather glove on his left hand, he could feel the metal heating up from the friction. Not long now. Fire. Fire. He tucked the soles of his boots inward, slowing his descent. A storey above ground, he let go. Dropped, carried the momentum into a roll, came up firing.

He was halfway across the street when he realised the hostiles weren't trying to get to Steve with anything like their previous obsession. He shot half a dozen in the space of three paces and received a nudge from his mental ammo counter. Getting low. At the worst time possible, too.

Naturally.

The hostiles were definitely hanging back now. A ring maybe six feet wide had opened around Steve. No telling how long _that_ would last. The remnant of the previous wave were still busy. Steve grabbed one around the neck — Bucky heard the crack — but his left arm didn't move. Using the shield to shelter as much of his body mass as he could, Bucky surmised.

Another five rabbits took a dirt nap before he breached the cordon to reach Steve's side. Steve took care of the last one himself and tossed the body into the massing ranks of its cousins. His breath stuttered from trembling lips.

"Buck — " It was barely a whisper.

"Shh." Bucky crashed to his knees and dropped the rifle to the ground. He needed his hands for this. But he kept the weapon well within reach. "Don't talk. Breathe."

The shield twitched and fell away from the magnetic armband. Steve's hand appeared, pressed to a gushing stomach wound and spasming weakly.

Coherent thought vanished in a haze of static.

"Language," Steve rasped after an infinity had passed.

Bucky's jaw snapped shut on the flow of cursing.

But his body didn't forget what to do. His eyes never stopped moving, darting from the blood to Steve's pale face, eyelids fluttering, to the waiting ring of hostiles. Somewhere in the distance the others were yelling at him, asking for an update. He ignored them. The black jacket would be no use as a bandage. He shrugged out of it. Next layer? Better. He peeled off his tank top, turned it moisture-wicking side out, lifted Steve's hand, and packed it into the wound.

Steve let out a strangled yell. His hands clutched at thin air.

"I know," Bucky said, pressing down hard. "It hurts. Yeah. Just like old times." He set Steve's hand back on the gaping hole, applying enough pressure to evince another groan. "Hold that." Protection? He slipped Carter out of Steve's thigh sheath, flipped it, and forced the handle into Steve's off-hand. "And that."

A ripple ran through the massed hostiles. Looked like their reprieve was up. Sentient the rabbits might be, but they weren't _that_ organised. There was some bigger force at work here behind the scenes.

He had a bone to pick with whoever was running this show.

"Keep breathing," he added, slipping on his jacket and strapping it shut. If those teeth could go through Steve's uniform, his jacket wouldn't stand a chance. But any protection was better than none.

Besides, it held all his knives.

Well. Some of his knives.

"And don't do anything stupid until I get back."

Steve rasped a barely-there laugh in reply. His fingers tightened on Carter. He nodded.

Bucky nodded back, pushed the worry off to the side, and slammed the door shut on it. Another ripple spread through the watchers. He was out of time.

Steve's shield slid onto his metal arm as if it belonged there. Bucky unfolded himself to his full height and planted a foot on each side of Steve's shaking body. Staking a claim. Marking his territory. _Mine._ Leisl leapt to his hand in a whisper of movement, spun hypnotic circles, and settled.

He was neither Sergeant Barnes nor the Winter Soldier. But he had been both of those people in the past, and they were both good — very good, one might say _expert_ — at certain things. The Winter Soldier knew decades of fighting, armed and unarmed combat, the most effective ways of killing. Sergeant Barnes knew how to protect Steve Rogers.

The dogtags blazed in his mind.

As the first hostile moved in, Bucky sank into his combat fugue and turned to meet it.

No room for thought in the blur of action. He moved in a seamless flow of lunge-and-stab-and-pivot-and-block-and-stab-and, releasing hostiles from existence with a single blow each. Anything more would be a waste of energy.

If he had understood the concepts of _like_ and _dislike,_ the Winter Soldier would have said he didn't like inefficiency.

When a rabbit almost slipped past him, he killed it and noted the mistake. Too long at the south corner of the objective. More time needed at the north. Never stay in one place for too long. The hostiles kept coming. Every tiny error meant another record made, another gap plugged in the defensive circle. He didn't make the same mistake twice.

Sergeant Barnes always had been driven to excel.

But he wasn't only the sum of those two men.

Under the battle mask of drawn brows and straight mouth, fierce satisfaction suffused him. This was more than a frantic fight for his best friend's life. More than just another mission passed down from anonymous handlers. Here passion met skill; here was the silence beneath the storm; here, he balanced on that infinite line between mindless brutality and effortless grace. A leg movement became as much a _grand battement_ as a mule kick; an arm lashing out was both overhand swing and _port de bras effacé_.

Bucky had his autonomy. More than that, he had his purpose _._

 _Protect Steve Rogers._

He could do this all day.

The shield was an extension of his left arm, metal on metal, power and brute force; Leisl was an extension of his right, agility and precision and poise. Light-footed and heavy-booted, he danced among the dead. Lunged, whirled, stabbed. Spun away, stabbed, and stabbed again.

Arrows whistled past, thinning the herd. The ground rocked beneath his feet as a shockwave rolled through. Twin pistols spat. An artificial energy blast hit home, leaving a smoking crater of blood; and then another, and another, and another.

Bucky saw them and didn't see them; noted them and discarded them.

His eyes narrowed, senses flaring.

There. A quarter-turn behind him, a human hostile rose out of the furry sea. His body moved on autopilot, taking out rabbits with detached accuracy. The human moved closer. Brown hair. Black suit. Polished dress shoes in an unlikely shade of blue. And still the man came forward, heedless of the bodies under his feet, the blood splattering his leather shoes. A bare two metres away now. The rabbits were all but dealt with. The backup could finish them off.

The man smirked.

Bucky _leapt —_

 _—_ _shield braced, legs bent, Leisl sharp and glittering in his hand, ready to slit the throat of the man who had nearly killed Steve, the man who might still have killed Steve if they didn't get help in time —_

— and Steve thundered from behind him: "Sergeant Barnes, stand down!"

Bucky halted an inch from the hostile, locking his muscles and swaying with the effort of killing that much momentum in such a short space of time. "Yes, sir," he acknowledged over his shoulder. Instinct. Reflex. Some hindbrain memory kicking in. It had been an order from a commanding officer, after all.

The man was still smirking at him.

Bucky knocked him unconsciousness with a single mathematical punch.

The next second he was back at Steve's side as the last few rabbits gave up the ghost, courtesy of Clint's sharpshooting. Steve had raised himself on a elbow to peer at the hostile. Arm shaking, he blinked at Bucky, twitched, and collapsed to lie flat again. His right hand went limp. Carter clattered to the ground. His chest rose and fell in heaving breathes. His left hand still held its position over the stomach wound, albeit with far less pressure than Bucky would have liked.

He was conscious, though. Barely.

Bucky moved Steve's bloody hand away and replaced it with his own, garnering a whimper in response. Good. If the pressure hurt, it was doing its job.

A crimson pool covered the ground around their position. Bucky ignored the blood soaking his trousers. How fast was it flowing? Hmm. Not as fast as it had been earlier; packing the wound must have helped there.

Still flowing too fast for his liking. Far too fast. Steve's system would be producing more blood cells to counter the loss, but all that was doing was pushing the blood out faster. The bite was too wide to close up naturally. Too wide to start clotting without outside intervention.

Footsteps approached behind him. Their missing team members, maybe? Yeah, there was Natasha swearing at the mess.

Steve's eyes fluttered open. He looked at Bucky and swallowed. "How bad?"

"Bad," Bucky said grimly.

Steve nodded, resigned. "Need me to do anything?"

"Not yet."

Bucky ripped Steve's uniform jacket open and peeled the left side away from his body. The blue shirt underneath was mottled with sweat patches and dark with blood. And, per standard mission protocol, it was a Stark UnderArmour design.

Which meant he couldn't cut it to bare the injury site.

"Here." Clint, kneeling on Steve's far side, held out a knife no bigger than Bucky's thumb. "It's, uh, it's special. Should do the job."

"Thanks." He made an experimental slice up the side seam and whistled. It was child's play _._ The shirt might have been made of plastic sheeting for all the resistance it gave. "Smooth, Barton. I want one."

"No guarantees, man. Nat's sister gave me that for Christmas."

They all knew Codename: Natasha's Sister was one Laura Barton.

Bucky grinned, his hands working steadily to cut the sticky, half-dried material loose. It would be easier if Steve didn't fill his clothes out so well. Bucky prodded Steve's stomach in nonverbal request. After a moment, he received the suck-in he was looking for. It was the work of seconds to slit the resulting crease and pull the flaps away. "You need to lose some weight, pal."

Steve's eyes slitted open, dark with pain. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "First time you've ever said _that_ to me."

"Yeah, well, pardon me for making sure you didn't starve during the Depression."

"You're —" gasp — "pardoned."

Bucky probed the edges of the wound with tender fingers. He didn't like the look of it. But at least it was clear; no debris in the site, no teeth or fur. The blood had probably washed it out. He wouldn't mind rinsing it anyway. "Anyone got some water?"

"Sorry."

"No."

"I am afraid not."

"Do I look like I have room in this suit?"

Damn. Worth a shot. He touched the gaping hole again, trying to parse the shape of it, the way the jagged edges might fit together. But there was too much skin missing.

Steve gritted his teeth, neck arching, fingers grasping at nothing.

Clint and Nat grabbed a hand each and held on as he rode out the wave of pain.

Bucky's stomach sank. The bleeding wasn't going to stop without outside intervention.

Without _his_ intervention.

He reached for his belt, paused, changed course. Calf. Throwing knives. They were the right shape. Flat bladed. Too narrow; he'd have to do it twice. Kirk, Bones, Spock? It didn't matter, they were identical. Bones. "Stevie, we're gonna have to close this wound up before we move you, alright? Otherwise you'll bleed out before we even make it to the jet."

"You're — calling me — Stevie." Steve didn't open his eyes. "That bad?"

No point pulling his punch. "I'm cauterising it."

Steve went white.

"I know, pal," Bucky murmured. "Sorry." And in the face of that reaction, he couldn't bear to use more than one press to seal the wound with burning metal. He slipped Bones away and pulled out one of the unnamed knives from the armoury. Longer, broader in the blade. Better. He'd only have to touch once.

And he could throw the knife in a drawer later and never look at it again.

"If it's any consolation, I'm sure it won't be anything like Gargellen."

Steve shuddered. "Small consolation. If I — recall correctly, you were right there — screaming with me. The boys had to rescue us."

"I'm right here wth you now." Bucky flipped the knife and held it out to Tony handle-first. "Stark, light her up."

Tony grimaced, but took the knife and turned away. Something fired up with a hiss.

"I could knock you out — " Bucky offered.

But Steve was already shaking his head. "No." His grip on Clint's hand tightened. "I'd rather be — aware. Of what's happening."

He could sympathise with that. "Alright." He could feel his heart rate creeping up on him. Bucky took a couple of breaths to settle it down. They couldn't both of them get stressed. There'd be time enough to fall apart once they were home.

He unstrapped his jacket and stripped it off. The air on his bare chest felt cooler than he'd expected. He rolled his eyes at Steve's bemused glance. "I need my arms free. Shut your mouth, Rogers, you're letting the flies in."

" _Hellooo,_ nurse."

"Oh, come on!" The gloves came off, too. Bucky flexed his fingers, huffed on his hands and rubbed them together briskly. He only had one shot at this. He was _not_ going to mess it up.

"What?" Steve's mouth twitched. "Just copying the example of my sergeant."

"That was _once_ —"

"I remember it happening at least three times."

 _"_ And I was off my head with painkillers." He pulled the wadded tank top free from the wound and threw it behind him, wincing as fresh blood gushed out of the hole.

"Wish I was."

"Barnes." Tony passed the knife back.

Steve clamped his eyes shut with a whimper. After a moment, a rasp left his lips. " _…if ever I 'list for a soldier again, the devil will be me sergeant…_ "

"Bite me," Bucky said. He shoved his right forearm into Steve's mouth and brought the scalding blade down to seal the wound.

Steve's eyes flew open. His nostrils flared. His teeth clamped down.

Bucky set his jaw against the agony and held the knife steady, counting silently. The scent of burning flesh filled the air. Behind him, someone gagged. Three. Four. Pain sliced through his arm, searing through the nerves and up into his shoulder. Steve must have broken skin. Five. He could feel the convulsions as Steve fought to get away from the pain. Seven. Eight… A foot kicked him squarely in the thigh. Ten.

He lifted the blade away.

Steve's mouth fell open, blood staining his teeth. His body slumped as the tension drained out of it. Bucky retrieved his arm and examined the tooth marks with a critical eye.

"Not a bad effort, pal." He poked the bleeding cuts and hissed. "Ow."

"You — told," Steve panted, "me to — bite you."

"I did."

"So it's — your own fault."

"It is, yes. I accept full responsibility, Captain, you can punish me later. Latrine duty for a week. Can you walk?"

"Yeah. Give me a second."

"I'll bring the jet over," Tony said. "Thor, fly the white coat back to base, would you? Take him to a holding cell. I don't want him in the jet, he might not survive the trip." He activated his suit and took off, flying west toward the park.

Steve wasn't as able to walk as he'd thought. In the end Bucky and Natasha looped an arm each over their shoulders and half-dragged him to the waiting jet. His colour worsened as they limped up the boarding ramp. By the time they got him lying down on the table at the centre of the cabin, he was all but non-responsive.

Bucky checked the wound one last time, satisfying himself that it was closed off as well as they could manage without a full medical team. Yes. Good. His black jacket went around the back of a chair, with the shield on its harness over the top.

"Hey, man. Here." Clint passed him a thick blanket.

"Thanks."

He tucked the blanket around Steve's waist and was about to bring it up further when his gaze snagged on bright silver. The dogtags. Blood splattered one corner of the primary tag. He turned it over in his hand, wiped the blood off _ngers Facility w York C_ , and tucked it back into place. Brought the blanket up to muffle Steve from chin to knees.

While he was on his feet, he washed and sanitised his hands, working the crusted blood out from under his nails. Then he found the first aid kit and cleaned and dressed his arm. The bandage was a bit itchy, but it would do the job. At the prompting of some inner voice, he retrieved a clean shirt from his locker and slipped it on.

And then he dug the squashed nutrient bar out of his pocket.

And sat in a chair against the wall where he could keep an eye on Steve.

And let himself breathe.


	7. Chapter 5, Part 1

**I don't own Marvel.**

 **Thanks, reviewers! I've always loved the visual of Bucky using Steve's shield. I think it's a bit Star Wars in a way - "this weapon is your life," type thing - and with the symbolism, Bucky literally holding Steve's life in his hands, and what that means for their friendship, the depth of trust they have... yeah. It's good.**

 **But anyway. Enough chatter.**

 **Enjoy.**

* * *

Chapter Five  
Prompt: Solitary

* * *

Helen Cho was waiting on the pad with a full medical team when they landed at the Facility.

"We'll tell the others," Clint said, clapping Bucky on the shoulder as he and Nat slipped past to the exit. "I'm guessing you'll want to stay with Steve? Yeah. Thought so."

Blue scrubs crowded around Steve's prone form, talking in a haze of medspeak and technobabble that flew over Bucky's head. The wind blowing through the open door was cold. New York. Right. Not Atlanta anymore. He grabbed his and Steve's bags from their lockers, slipped into his jacket, and reached for the shield harness.

"Barnes," Stark said.

Bucky looked up. His fingers tightened on the shield. "What?"

Tony paused in the middle of his post-flight checks and turned to meet Bucky's gaze squarely. For once he looked serious. "I — let me know if I can do anything to help, yeah?"

"I will. Thanks."

"You did good today."

That was nearest Tony would come to saying _thanks for being there when I wasn't,_ Bucky knew. He took the compliment with a nod. Helen's team had already Steve transferred to a rolling stretcher. Quick work. He grabbed the packs, slung the shield over his shoulder, and turned to follow them inside.

* * *

Sergeant Barnes, the Winter Soldier, and Bucky had two things in common.

Steve Rogers.

And hospitals.

For the first, Bucky could tolerate the second.

He hated the medical wing at the Facility. Hated hated _hated_ it. Hated the identical duck-egg blue walls, the lack of texture, the cloying smell of antiseptic that crept up his nostrils and yanked on his nose-hairs and infiltrated his lungs until he could smell nothing else for days at a time. It was lighter than Hydra's vaults and cleaner than France's field infirmaries, at least, but in a place designed by Stark and paid for by Fury, he would expect nothing less. The company was okay, he supposed. The doctors were competent. The med team assigned to Captain America hadn't tried to kick Bucky out of the room yet.

He still hated it.

And the drinks _sucked._

He took a second experimental sip of the sludge they had the audacity to call coffee, grimaced, and considered spitting it back into the styrofoam cup. He'd thought the first sip had been bad enough, but the second was even worse; was it possible for black coffee to curdle in the space of thirty seconds? He didn't think so. Would spitting out the mouthful be labelled bad manners? Ugh. Yes, it would be.

It'd serve them right for serving this rubbish in the first place.

The med team was whispering and casting sideways looks at him. Bucky braced himself and swallowed the coffee. Yuck. Where was the nearest bin? Outside, in the corridor.

That settled that. He'd have to grin and bear it, because he sure as hell wasn't leaving Steve's side.

Helen crossed to her team, talked with them for a minute, and swept over to Bucky's side.

He rose to his feet. "Doctor Cho."

"Sergeant Barnes."

"Bucky, please."

She smiled. "I'm afraid we'll need to ask you to step out. We're moving Captain Rogers to surgery."

Bucky's flinch control was _very_ good. He didn't twitch a finger. "Guess you've got to see what the damage is on the inside, huh?"

"There's only so much the scans can tell us. As soon as the blood analysis comes back from the lab, we'll know a lot more." Her smile faded into professional pique. "I don't like dealing with an unknown poison. If it was a known substance, we could have it treated inside an hour. But as it is…"

"Yeah." Bucky shifted his weight. "Which theatre are you taking him to?"

"Number seven's the closest available. On the first floor. There's an observation window at the south end," she added, suddenly appearing to find a readout display on the wall the most fascinating thing in the room.

Good. "You'll let me know when he's out?"

"Of course."

"Thank you."

She nodded. Looked at Steve. Looked back at Bucky. "Well done on the cauterising. Very clean."

"I'm no doctor. But it's not the first time I've had to patch him up."

"I'm a geneticist, not a practicing M.D., but there's a fair amount of overlap. What you did was a bit more than just sticking a plaster on."

He tipped his head. "A bit. Quicker than having to stitch it closed; he never could sit still for that. I used to have to chase him around camp, just about sit on him. In '44… I forget the month... I sat through a couple of briefings I wasn't anywhere near classified to be at, because Steve had to be there _right this minute_ and I'd only half-finished closing some cut or other."

"The brass let you?"

"Captain America vouched for me." Bucky grinned. "And they didn't argue with him. Nobody did — except Peggy Carter."

"And Sergeant Barnes, I imagine," Helen said dryly.

" _Someone_ has to save him from his own stubbornness."

"Hmm."

He darted a look at her. What was that supposed to mean?

"He's lucky to have you," she said.

"No, I…" Bucky shook his head. "I'm lucky to have him. I wouldn't be here… if it wasn't for Steve." His throat closed up. He cleared it briskly. "Theatre Seven, you said?"

"Yes. We'll be there in fifteen minutes. Excuse me."

Helen floated back to her team.

Bucky slipped out of the room and down the hall, binning the half-cold imitation coffee sludge on his way.

Fifteen minutes. That gave him time to grab the packs from the armoury and lug them home to their apartment. After a minute's thought, he stripped off his dusty, sweaty, blood-stained jacket, transferred a couple of knives to more convenient locations on his person, and dropped the jacket on his bed. His combat boots and trousers could stay; he might be physically comfier in something fresher, but psychologically they made for a good anchor.

And in the event of a fight… well. It wasn't that he was _expecting_ to be attacked. But he always took a while to wind down after a battle. Hydra's mind-conditioning was gone, but the body-conditioning ran deep. He'd made the mistake of letting his guard down after a mission once. It had hurt. He hadn't done it again.

At least the blue shirt he'd accidentally stolen from Steve's locker was clean.

He splashed cold water on his face, welcoming the sting. Better. Then he grabbed a few supplies, stuffed them into a carry-bag, shouldered the shield again, and strode back to the medical wing.

Halfway there, he slipped his phone from his pocket and called Natasha.

"Romanoff. What's up, Buck?"

"They're taking him for surgery," Bucky said, and heard the barely-there indrawn breath from the other end. "I don't think it's serious, I don't know, Helen didn't seem all that worried. They need to see what the damage is under the scarring. She said they'll know more once the blood tests come back, but…"

"Lab results aren't back yet?"

"No."

"Huh. Taking their time."

"Poison's a complicated beast. You know that."

"I do." He could hear the grin. "What do you need?"

"Coffee," Bucky said. "Proper coffee. Espresso. Not that пульпа they call coffee down in the med wing."

"Can do. You're a long black, right? No sugar?"

"That's the one."

"Anything else?"

"I'm starving."

That time she laughed out loud. "Bruce is on deck in the kitchen. Together we'll sort you out something proper."

"Thanks, Nat."

"No problem."

"Is Sam around?"

"Wilson?"

Bucky snorted. "No, the other Sam."

"Yeah, he's here. Hang on, I'll pass you over."

The line crackled, and then Sam said, "Hey, Barnes."

"Hey. Have you got a minute?"

"Sure."

"Medical wing, first floor, theatre seven. Observation window at the south end. Meet me there? Now?"

If the brusque request puzzled Sam, he didn't show it. "You got it."

"And tell Nat where you're going, will you? She'll need to know later."

"Wilco."

"Thanks."

* * *

Bucky found the alcove at the south end without a problem. Two couches were set either side of the floor-to-ceiling window, angled to give a clear view inside, with a low table between them. Steve was already there, gowned and prepped, sound asleep in the middle of the huddle of blue scrubs.

Not asleep, Bucky amended. Unconscious. He tracked the IV lines, noted the readouts, and nodded. Adequate dosage for a super soldier metabolism. Good. Oh, Helen had dealt with Steve before — and with Bucky himself, come to think of it — but it only took one mistake…

His right hand clenched at the memory. He straightened it with an effort. Quiet footsteps approached down the hall, and he turned to greet Sam.

"How is he?" Sam came to stand beside him at the window.

"See for yourself."

Sam's eyes swept over the room before moving to the display glowing in the corner of the window. He nodded. "Right. And how are you? I heard it was pretty tough out there."

"Fine." _Not ready to talk about it._ "Here, I wanted to show you something."

Judging from the look on his face, Sam knew he was anything but fine. He didn't press. "Oh? I know it's my birthday, but you didn't have to get me anything."

Bucky blinked. "It's your birthday."

"Yep. Thirty-nine years old, right here. No missions on your birthday, remember? Corporate policy."

"I forgot. I clean forgot. I'm sorry, Sam, it's been a long night. Day. Couple of days. Happy birthday!"

"Hey, thanks. Don't worry about it."

"Anyway. Here." He slipped the dogtags from around his neck and held them out. "I don't know if Steve told you about them or not…"

Sam shook his head. "No."

""They're accurate for the 40's, but he made a few changes. Updated contact details, that sort of thing. He thought they'd be a good reminder for me."

"Are they?"

Again with the lump in his throat. He was getting positively sentimental in his old age. "Yeah. Couldn't ask for anything better."

"Good." Sam moved the primary tag away and raised an eyebrow. "I'm Steve's N.O.K?"

"Thought you'd want to know. In case."

Keen eyes darted up to look at Bucky. "Why didn't he put you?"

"He said — he'd be with me. We'd be together. If anything happened that was bad enough that the N.O.K. needed to be informed."

"No point listing you as his N.O.K. if you're down and damaged right there with him."

"Exactly."

Sam nodded. He passed the dogtags back, eyes returning to the theatre. "Thanks, Bucky. Means a lot."

"No problem." Bucky slipped them back on and tucked them under his shirt.

"You'll let me know," Sam said. It wasn't a question. "When you're ready to talk about it."

Bucky liked counselling sessions as much as the next man, especially if the next man was Tony Stark. But they could be… useful. "I'll let you know."

"Good. Come here."

They hugged for a minute, and then Sam drew back. "Listen, I've got to get going. Text me when he's out, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Bucky stood in front of the window and stared at Steve. The sound of Sam's footsteps faded away down the hall. No doubt his second lot of company would be here soon enough. He perched on the back of the couch and opened the carry-bag.

When Natasha arrived ten minutes later, he was hard at work cleaning the shield.

"Any reason you're sitting on the back of the couch instead of the part you're _meant_ to sit on?"

"The view's better."

"Hm." She dropped a couple of paper sacks on the table. "Does Steve know you've got that thing?"

"Nope."

"He can be pretty touchy about other people holding it, y'know."

"I know."

Bucky could feel her staring at him. He kept his head bent, gritting his teeth and scrubbing at a particularly stubborn stain.

"So?" she said after a minute.

"Look, do you really think I'd be doing this if Steve didn't want me to touch it? Come on, Nat, you're smarter than that."

She smiled. "Guess you wouldn't."

"Good guess."

She sat on the couch beside him, her bottom level with his feet, and held out a takeaway coffee cup. "One long black, no sugar. Double shot."

"Thanks."

"Drink it while it's hot."

He sighed and set the shield aside. Far be it from him to ignore the wishes of a lady. The first sip was absolute heaven. "Thank you," he said again, and meant every syllable.

"You're welcome." She scanned the window display, glanced through into the theatre, and turned back to Bucky. "How are you holding up?"

He opened his mouth. Stopped. Closed it again. Stared blindly through the observation window. "You're my next of kin."

"Okay." She accepted the non-sequitur without pause.

"Thought you should know."

"Okay."

"He didn't want me to go. On the mission. Or — no, that's not fair. He didn't put it like that. We'd been up half the night, I'd had a — a bad couple of hours. He said I didn't have to go if I wasn't feeling up to it. Said no-one would blame me."

"He's right," Natasha said softly. "No-one would have blamed you. We all know what it's like."

"And if I hadn't been there?" Bucky closed his eyes, hearing the haunted note in his voice. "If he'd taken that sixth nest down by himself, gone to clear the parking lot _by himself_?"

"You _were_ there. And even if you weren't, he would have had backup of some sort. Thor or Stark or me… It wouldn't have just been him."

The coffee cup shook in his hand. Bucky gulped another mouthful. "Need some grenades."

"What?"

"Some grenades. I need to grab some. For the next mission. They would've come in handy today." Another gulp, and if he was choking down more air than coffee, who cared. "Or a flamethrower. That would have worked, too."

"Bucky. Stop with the what-ifs already. You can't change what happened."

He almost smiled at that. It was a good thing Steve hadn't heard that. Talk about eating his words… "I know." He put the coffee down and picked up his rag to start cleaning again.

And Natasha yanked it out of his hand. "No."

"I told you, Steve doesn't — "

"You said you were starving." She unfolded the tops of the paper bags, checked them, and handed him one. "Eat."

He peeped inside. One homemade bacon double-cheeseburger, supersoldier-sized, and fries. His stomach growled.

Natasha laughed. "I told you."

"What's in the other bag?"

"Snacks. Fruit, crackers, cheese, that sort of thing. And a water bottle. I wasn't sure how long you were planning to stick around here."

"As long as it takes."

"Thought that might be the case. You want some company?"

To his surprise, Bucky found he did. "I'd appreciate that."

She kicked her feet up on the coffee table as he bit into the burger. "So," she said, "you know how Clint's always complaining that he's getting too old for this gig and he really needs to remember to stretch first and all that? He's in an ice bath at the moment. Turns out there was moment there near the end where he got surprised by a rear attack and had to lunge out of the way, and, well, his quads hated it…"

He ate and talked, and talked and ate. When he'd finished the burger, they shared the fries. He finished his coffee — and even mostly-cold it was better than the med wing sludge had been when it was hot — and picked up the cloth again. By the time the medical team wheeled Steve out of the theatre, the shield was as clean as it had been the day Howard had given it to him.

Disregarding one or two minor scratches, of course. And a few areas where the paint had scraped off. But there was nothing Bucky could do about that.

He gave them a few minutes to get clear before he started packing his things away.

Natasha stretched and stood. "I assume you won't be joining us for dinner?"

"Probably not."

"I'll bring you a plate. Or someone will." She hugged him. "Don't wear yourself out, alright? Steve's not the only one who was hurt today."

She was a good enough friend that Bucky didn't bristle at the reminder. He was an adult; he could take care of himself. "I won't. Thanks, Nat."

"Welcome. Text me later if you want another coffee."

Through the observation window, the theatre lay still and dark. His arm itched. He slipped a finger under the bandage to scratch. It didn't help.

His phone chirped.

Helen: _Steve's out of theatre. Back downstairs in same room as before. Sleeping, but you're welcome to keep him company._

The itching eased. He flicked off a reply.

Bucky: _Thank you. I'll be there soon._

Okay. Bag. Harness. Shield. That was everything? Yes. Good. He threw a final glance at the theatre, turned, and strode down the hall.


	8. Chapter 5, Part 2

**I don't own it.**

 **Sorry! I could've sworn I'd updated this yesterday. Oops. Here you go. Better late than never, eh?**

 **Also, I've got another couple of fics in the works, you'll be happy to hear. First one's an alternate version of the Bucky interrogation scene from Civil War, which is being beta read as we speak. Second one's a Clint Barton Undercover 5+1, which I'm more than halfway through writing. It'll probably make more sense if you've seen a few of Jeremy Renner's other movies, like The Hurt Locker and The Bourne Legacy. Just a heads-up. :)**

 **As always, thanks for the reviews! You guys are the best!**

* * *

"Hey."

The sleepy murmur jolted Bucky from his book. He checked the time reflexively. Just after nine pm. Steve had been out for a solid five hours.

"You're awake!"

"It appears so." Steve gave a tiny smile. He blinked a couple of times and looked around the room. "Medical wing?"

"Yeah."

Captain America didn't pout. But Steve Rogers did. "I hate hospitals."

"Everyone hates hospital, pal."

"I _really_ hate hospitals."

The words lined up in his mind without conscious thought: _Yeah? You think that's bad, try having seven decades of cryo and brainwashing in grungy pseudo-medical surrounds and then say that to my face again._ Bucky bit his tongue. "Hey, be grateful they're here."

"I am." He shifted and winced. "Honestly, I am. How bad is it?"

Bucky dog-eared his page and set the book down. "Inconclusive."

"What does that mean?"

Was Steve craning his head to get a look at the medical chart? He was. Bucky flipped the screen around with a finger so that Steve could read it.

"Exactly that," he said. "Your blood test results are back from the lab, _finally,_ but they're not exactly helpful. The gut wound seems to be okay. Helen's team opened you up and had a rummage around, set a few things back into place, and closed it back up again. She said you might be a bit sore there for a few days."

"I bet the cauterising helped there."

"Considering you would have bled out long before you got home… yes."

Steve's eyes flicked to meet Bucky's, deep blue and sober. "Thanks, Buck."

"Don't do it again."

"I won't."

He clenched his hand. This was Steve. He could be honest. "Don't — make me — do it again. Please."

"I won't," Steve whispered. "I'm sorry."

"And don't apologise. You nearly died, you've got nothing to apologise for."

"Yes, sir." That grin peeped out.

Bucky snorted a laugh. "You're a punk."

"Jerk."

"Do you ever think about coming up with something other than that to say?"

"Do _you_?"

He shrugged. "It's a tried-and-true formula. Gets the point across."

"Likewise." Steve wriggled.

Bucky caught the grimace and frowned. "Are the painkillers not working?"

"No, no, they're working. I just.. the angle of this bed is… not the best."

Buch leaned forward, found the launch control dangling over the side, and pressed it into Steve's hand.

"That's better," Steve said once the top of the bed was tilted more upright. "Now I can talk to you without getting a sore neck."

"Just like old times." Bucky grinned at the memory of Steve before the serum, craning his neck to look up at Bucky.

"I wasn't _that_ short."

" _I_ wasn't that _tall._ You were just…"

Steve's eyes narrowed.

"Uh," Bucky said. "You were. Um. Average height. Which is, is, is nothing to be ashamed of."

"Nice try. What about the poison?"

Back to business. "The lab results were nothing to crow about. It's something new."

"Isn't it always?"

"Mostly they've been working on stabilising your system. They figure they don't have to reverse the effects of the venom; all they have to do is keep it from spreading. Your magical superpowers will do the rest."

Steve's eyes widened in horror. "My _what?_ " he squeaked.

"Magical. Superpowers."

"They actually said that?"

"No. Creative license." Bucky grinned shamelessly. "Worth it for the look on your face."

"Come here."

"No."

Steve beckoned with a finger. "Come. Closer. I need to punch you."

"You're not allowed to punch me," Bucky said. "I'm an elderly PTSD-suffering World War Two veteran."

"So am I. And I need to hit you."

"You're my C.O. — "

"Which gives me the right to discipline you — "

"And you've already pulled rank on me once in the last twenty-four hours. That's your quota used up for the next ten years."

Steve blinked. "Once every ten years, that's all I get?"

"Yes."

"I have seventy years of unused rank-pulling stacked up. That's another seven uses."

"You were dead. It doesn't count."

"Does too."

"Does not."

"Does too."

"Does not. Shut up or I'll call Nat and cancel our coffee order."

Steve's eyes lit up. And, miracle of miracles, he shut up.

For about ten seconds.

"I'm hungry."

Bucky pulled his phone out.

"No — Buck, come on — "

"Shush. Nat, it's me. I want to cancel those two long blacks."

"Bucky, Bucky, don't — "

Natasha could obviously hear Steve's protesting. She sounded like she was trying not to laugh. "Is that right?"

"Yeah. And Steve's dinner, cancel that as well. He's not feeling well."

Steve whined. "James Buchanan Barnes, I will _kill_ you unless you get my coffee back — "

"No you won't, you can't even sit upright. Nat, you may as well postpone the late-night entertainment. I don't think Captain Crankypants here is going to be up to it."

"Oh, that's not a problem," Natasha said. "There's nothing good on the media feeds anyway. At all."

He narrowed his eyes. "Is that right?"

"Yes."

"In that case, I won't see you at dinner time, will I?"

"No. No you won't."

"Right. Bye." He hung up. "Sorry, Steve. No can do. Looks like you're doomed to an evening of isolation with only tasteless mush for food and me for company. Tough luck."

" _Bucky —_ "

For a moment he felt a genuine flicker of alarm. Steve's face was bright red, forehead creased, mouth trembling. Bucky actually couldn't tell if he was crying or laughing. But no, it was fine. Steve threw his head back and laughed until he gasped for breath, tears rolling down his face. Bucky leaned closer and fought down the instinctive soothing words, _it's okay, just breathe, breathe, you're fine._ Steve couldn't give himself an attack of asthma now. He didn't _have_ asthma anymore. Hadn't had it since June 1943.

But when Steve took a sharp breath and brought an arm around to brace his ribs, Bucky decided enough was enough. "Okay, Steve, breathe for me, yeah? Deep breaths, that's it."

"I — _am —_ breathing."

"Well, keep breathing. Good. Just like that. That's it."

Steve's breathing settled. "Okay. Okay, I'm calm. Please tell me you didn't actually cancel our coffees. Or my dinner."

Bucky smiled and gave in. "Natasha will be here any minute."

"With dinner?"

"With dinner. And coffee."

She turned up three minutes later with a plate of steaming food for Steve and three coffees. Steve lost no time digging in to the food. Bucky propped his feet on the bed, sipped his coffee, and watched the tiny worry lines ease from the corners of Nat's eyes.

The others arrived twenty minutes later, dragging in a couple of couches from the corridor for extra seating. Bucky pulled his chair closer to the bed and glared at anyone who got too close.

After the initial hubbub had died done and the general exclamations of _we were worried for you, man_ and _Bucky did such a good job_ had passed, Natasha whipped out her phone and lit up the big screen on the wall with the hugest grin Bucky had ever seen.

Steve leaned over to mock-whisper in his ear. "Why do I get the feeling we're in trouble?"

"Because we are." Bucky made no attempt to keep his voice down. "Look at her face. She's got something planned."

"Question is…" Steve glanced at the intently listening faces around the room and switched to French. "Allons-nous l'aimer?" _Will we like it?_

"Elle le fera que nous le voulions ou non," Bucky said with a shrug. _She'll do it whether we like it or not._ "I suggest you relax and enjoy the show. Whatever it is."

"C'est la vie."

"Now that's something I never thought I'd hear you say."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Steve Rogers, who never gets knocked down but he comes up fighting again?"

The eyebrow dropped. Steve said, half-musing, "Bucky Barnes, who never gets his mind wiped by Hydra but he starts clawing back memories."

Bucky looked at him for a long moment. Chewed his lip. Took a breath. "De qui pensez-tu que j'ai appris ça?" _Who do you think I learned that from?_ He patted Steve's arm and turned away. "Nat, are you done with setting that up or do you need help from an doddering old man who doesn't understand your youngster's technology? — By which I mean Steve."

Natasha's smile showed rather too many teeth, and he abruptly remembered that she was fluent in, among other languages, French. "No, we're good to go."

"Shall we start, then?" Steve said. "What is it, anyway? Movie night?"

Clint laughed from where he was ensconced on the couch with his legs thrown over Sam's lap. "You could say that."

"Can I, uh…" Sam raised a finger. "Trigger warning for extremely recent trauma. Just saying. Tell us if it's too much."

Bucky frowned. "Please tell me there weren't any cameras in that parking lot."

Silence.

"Because if what we're about to watch is what you're implying it is, I'm going to find that recording and ram it down your collective oesophagus, and then pull the tapes out through your intestines."

Deeper silence.

"Bucky," said Steve. "Chill."

"It's not quite like that," said Wanda.

"Mind you," said Bruce, "it's not quite _not_ like that, either."

"I'm sure we can handle it." Steve shuffled closer to the edge of the bed and propped his shoulder against Bucky's. "Natasha, play the thing."

 _The thing_ , as it turned out, was a comprehensive scrolling view of the day's media feeds. And they all had one thing in common.

BBCNews: _As the city of Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America recovers from an attack of venomous mutant rabbits this morning, new footage has emerged of James Barnes defending Captain America when the latter was injured…_

PresidentialTwitterFeed01: _Just saw the #WinterDancer video! Great stuff. Just great. The best stuff. #DefendAmerica #WinterProtectsAmerica #SaveAmerica #AmericaFirst_

George Takei: _This guy's got skills. Take a look. #Barnestormer #WinterDancer_

ImperialRussianBalletCo: _The #WinterDancer shows a clear Russian School of Ballet influence in his combat style. You can see in the extension of his leg at 0:46, the clean line through to the toe, the half-turn of the ankle in preparation for the next movement…_

And on. And on.

" _Move over, Captain America,_ " Steve read aloud. " _#WinterDancer has the shield now_?"

" _#WinterSarge can —_ " Bruce giggled. " _He can have my babies anytime!_ Who _are_ these people?"

Bucky stared blankly. "What — it's on the internet? The video, it's, it's on the internet. Is this a joke?"

Clint grinned. "No joke, man. Nat, you should read the next one."

" _Look at those hips move_ ," Natasha said, rolling her eyes. " _He's making my ovaries explode._ "

Sam and Clint fist bumped.

"You've gone viral," Tony said. "In a good way. It's all positive publicity for us."

"Makes a nice change," Steve murmured.

"And it's on the internet?" Bucky asked again.

"Yeah," said Natasha. "Everywhere on the internet. You're — you're everywhere. The video's getting millions of views, the photos aren't far behind…"

Bucky dropped his head into a hand and groaned. "Photos. There are photos."

"Damn good ones," Clint said. "Nat?"

"Yeah, uh, give me a second… here."

Images filled the screen. Bucky kneeling beside Steve; Bucky staring down at Steve, lips pressed in a tight line, eyes abstracted; Steve's stubbled jaw, teeth gritted in pain; Bucky pressing his shirt into the wound, and pressing Steve's hand onto the shirt; a close-up of the shield with a blood-splattered metal hand reaching for it; Bucky standing over Steve, shield on his arm, Leisl in hand; and then dozens of images from every angle of the ensuing fight.

"No shirtless photos," Natasha said, and Bucky relaxed a little. "I figured you'd want to save what little privacy you could."

He shook his head. Nodded. "I — Yeah. Thanks."

Tony reached for Natasha's phone and zeroed in on one particular photo. It was taken from Steve's feet, looking up the length of his body to the bloody hand clasped against his gut, the lolling of his head, the glazed blue eyes. Bucky stood with one foot planted on each side of Steve's body, shield half-raised, Leisl glittering in the morning light. The horde of rabbits could be clearly seen around the edges of the circle. By some stroke of luck or fortune, he was facing straight into the camera, chin dipped, staring ahead at nothing and everything.

Bucky shivered.

"Hey," Steve said. "It's you."

"I look…" He groped for the words. "I don't know. Scary."

"You _were_ scary," Tony said. "But good scary. This is the main shot we're using for publicity."

"Really gets the point across," Clint drawled. "Don't mess with the Captain, or you'll end up messing with the Sarge."

"And Sarge is one terrifying son of a mother."

Bucky ran a hand through his hair. "I… I don't know what to say. This is insane."

"You're trending." Steve grinned unrepentantly. "Better you than me, pal. We've all been there; it's about time you had a turn."

"They think I'm hotter than you."

"You _are_ hotter than me."

Bucky snorted. "Yeah, what dame doesn't want a man with massive shoulder scarring and a thousand-yard stare, huh? What's this video they keep going on about, anyway? Please don't tell me it's whole thing from start to finish, there's no way anyone from this generation would sit through something that long."

"We have access to the whole thing," Natasha said. She tapped away at her phone for a minute. "But the one that was released to the public is about two and a half minutes long."

Steve looked at Bucky in silent enquiry.

Bucky sighed and waved a hand. "Yeah, go on. I guess it's only fair that you get to see my footwork. Or… " He frowned. "That _I_ get to see it, I suppose. I was bit preoccupied at the time."

Natasha nodded. "We patched the audio feed from the comm channel through. Just to give it a bit more punch. Alright, here we go…"

The video filled the screen. Bucky reached for Steve's hand reflexively, curling two fingers around his wrist. Pulse. There. Good. Alive. Alive, alive alive. He could do this. They could do this.

On the screen, he pressed Carter into Steve's hand.

" _…_ _don't do anything stupid until I get back._ "

Steve's grip tightened on Bucky's hand. Bucky glanced across the hospital bed, saw the sneaking smile, and grinned. He turned back to the video in time to catch the mutual nod.

Two pairs of sombre blue eyes. Not surprising; death was an old friend — for Steve and Bucky more than most. They'd known that this could mean the end.

But that hadn't meant they had to accept it.

Bucky watched himself plant a foot each side of Steve, watched Leisl spin and settle, watched the shield come up ready for action. Every movement was fluid, full of purpose. His expression flickered for a moment, fear and fury standing out strong; and then it wiped smooth, the battle mask coming to the fore, eyes going distant and dangerous.

Across the room, Tony whistled. "I think I'm having a religious experience here."

"Blasphemy," Steve and Bucky said in unison. They didn't look away from the screen.

And on the screen, Bucky began to move.

 _Oh._ Bucky's breath caught. Forgetting himself, forgetting the room full of people, the desperate tension of the moment, he leaned forward, entranced.

No wonder the Imperial Ballet liked it. He'd known at the time that it was something more than mere battle. But this? This was _art._

He stared at the figure on the screen — him, that was him — how was that him? he didn't remember moving like that — as it turned in everlasting circles, working to keep a perimeter free around Steve. The movements distantly chimed with the memory: _there_ was the mule kick, _grand battement. There_ was a flying lunge, a _jete_ the length of Steve's body. It wasn't pure dance and it wasn't pure combat, but it was something of each. And something more. An elegant merging of the best of both.

He caught a minute of something that almost had the rhythm of a waltz, and then Bucky laughed aloud. Not many people would have thought to kill a homicidal rabbit with a 1930's Lindy Hop kick. He shook his head, disbelieving. How the hell was that him? But it was. It clearly was. He could see the thousand-yard stare of a soldier taking everything in, acting on skill so ingrained it became instinct; he could see the faint smile hovering around his mouth, the familiar glimmer of devil-may-care.

Bucky swallowed the lump in his throat. _What are you fighting for? Or are you just fighting against?_

Steve. He'd been fighting for Steve. The results were… well… self-evident.

The timer in the corner of the screen skipped and skipped again, showing the progression as he decimated the field. There were a couple of close calls. Hostiles he nearly hadn't seen in time. Hostiles that came even closer to Steve than he'd thought. He tightened his grip on Steve's hand, concentrated on the pulse, and waited for the end.

The video had fifteen seconds left to run when the white coat suddenly entered the frame.

Across the room, Sam jumped and then swore. "Gets me every time. Every time, man. He's just _there,_ bam."

And now Bucky could hear Steve talking; or rasping, really. He hadn't heard him at the time. "Bucky. Look out. Look out, Bucky, behind — We need him alive, no, Buck, stop, we — " Steve struggled up onto his elbow and, as Bucky sprang, teeth bared, knife gleaming, he roared the one thing that could penetrate Bucky's brain. " _Sergeant Barnes, stand down!_ "

Even Bucky had to admit to being impressed at how quickly the figure went from mid-air leap to standing stock-still half an inch from the white coat. A few whistles and cheers broke out around the room.

"Just wait for it," Clint said, grinning. "Wait for it…"

"Yes, sir," Bucky acknowledged on screen. The dancer was gone; this was all Sergeant Barnes, clipped syllables and military-straight bearing.

"What," said Bruce, "Bucky calling Steve _sir?_ I mean, it's impressive, but…"

"Keep watching."

The white coat smirked. Bucky's chin tilted in a familiar movement that was part boredom and part arrogance. Insouciance, his mother would have called it.

His fist lashed out.

And the white coat went over like a felled tree.

"There!" Clint exclaimed as the video ended. "That punch, man! Was that a thing of beautiful precision or what?"

"It was, yes." Sam sighed. "Like you told us the other ten times."

"You can teach me that, right, Barnes? I mean, I can throw a punch as well as the next — "

Natasha cleared her throat.

" — woman," Clint said without a pause. "But to punch someone unconscious with that much efficiency… I'm jealous, I really am. You teach me that, I can teach you some tumbling tricks. There were a couple of times there you could have used them."

"I can teach you," Bucky said, grinning. "It's not hard. Just have to know the trajectory."

"Doubt I'll have a problem with that."

"Good with your aim, are you?"

Clint smirked. "I can aim better than you any day of the week."

"Boys," Natasha interrupted. "Please. Hey, look at this one. Someone's put a parody video up already…"

Maybe the best way to get over trauma was to laugh about stupid parody videos of it, Bucky thought. In any case, the first three were fine.

But the fourth featured a blond who kept poking his head up from where he lay on the ground to sing the tagline of the horribly ear-wormy song. A singing near-corpse was somehow far less funny.

It was making him uncomfortable even before Bruce turned to Steve, laughing, and said, "He really does look a lot like you. Regular old lookalike, huh? You got a cloning machine somewhere that we don't know about?"

Bucky's breath caught painfully in his throat.

"I'm a better singer than he is," Steve retorted.

Whatever he said next was lost to the static in Bucky's ears. Bruce's words echoed.

"Lookalike."

"Looks a lot like you."

"Lot like you."

"Looks like you."

"Looks like."

"Looks like."

"Regular old lookalike."

"Lookalike."

" _Lookalike_."

Roaring filled his ears.

 _No. No, please…_

The world dissolved.


	9. Chapter 6

**I don't own it.**

 **I couldn't keep you hanging for too long, that would be cruel. Don't worry, things are looking up from here. One full chapter left after this one. It's long, I'll have to split it into two for you guys.**

 **Now taking votes on which story you want to see next:**

 **Option 1: Berlinterview. Civil War alternate take on the Bucky Interrogation scene. Dialogue- and character-heavy with an action epilogue covering the fallout. 28,000 words, 10 chapters. Bucky and Steve centric with support from Tony, Sam, Nat, and T'Challa.**

 **Option 2: Barton, Undercover. A 5+1 fic based around the idea that in Jeremy Renner's other movies, he's really Clint undercover. 4,400 words, 6 chapters. Clint centric (duh) with Nat showing up in the last chapter.**

 **Whichever option you vote for, rest assured that you'll be able to read both of them eventually. I'd adopt an alternate-days-for-alternate-stories posting schedule if I didn't think that would confusing as anything to keep up with. Over to you guys. Choose wisely. ;)**

* * *

Chapter Six  
Prompt: Lookalike

* * *

Bucky came back to himself crouched on the far side of the room, eyes locked in Steve's blue gaze. He was pressed against the wall, head tipped back, chest heaving with the effort of drawing in enough oxygen.

His left hand was thrown out to the side, fingers digging into the wall.

His right hand clamped white-knuckled around his dogtags.

"How long?" he croaked.

"Not long," Steve said. "A couple of minutes, maybe."

Bucky nodded. Closed his eyes. Concentrated on breathing. "I didn't hurt anyone?"

"You didn't hurt anyone." Stark lounged beside him, one hand encased in an armoured gauntlet. Ready to restrain him, if need be, but relaxed.

"Good." Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. His lungs protested the movement. He kept at it. In. Out. The tang of blood caught him by surprise; he twisted his head away and groaned. But it was in his head, he knew that without having to ask. Breathe. His pulse thundered in his ears.

"Bucky."

"Yeah?" he gasped.

"Are you with me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm — I'm here."

He heard the flicker of hesitation, the pain that Steve felt at even having to ask. "Prove it. Please."

"What do you — want me to say?" Bucky gritted his teeth against another whiff of non-existent blood. Eased his grip on the dogtags, breathing hard. He felt like he'd run a hundred miles at a sprint. Sweat ran down his forehead. He wiped it away. "James Buchanan Barnes. Steven Grant Rogers. 1939, I spent two weeks teaching you how to throw a punch without you breaking your fingers. Did the same thing after Kreischberg, 'cept that was so you could learn how to do it without breaking _my_ fingers, 'cause you didn't know your own strength. We used to live in Brooklyn. Now we live upstate. It's 2017, we're technically in our nineties even though we only feel like we're in our late twenties, and neither of us can afford to buy a house."

"That'll do. Thanks. What happened?"

"I — " Bucky screwed up his face, fighting to sort out the clash of sounds and visuals in his head. "I killed you."

A susurration of noise ran through the room. Steve didn't flinch. "No, you didn't."

"Blonde hair," Bucky whispered. "Blue eyes. Five foot seven. One ten pounds. Mole in the left armpit. They showed me the file, then they showed me _you._ In the flesh."

"It wasn't me. Wasn't you. It didn't happen, Buck, we've talked about this. It was another — "

"It wasn't a nightmare!" He took a deep breath. Unclenched his metal hand from where it had sunk into the wall. "It wasn't a nightmare," he said again, more quietly. "I know the difference. I know — the difference."

"Alright." Steve looked like he was resisting the urge to raise his hands in surrender. "It's alright. I believe you."

Breathe. Inhale. Exhale.

"Lookalike," Bucky said after a minute.

"Lookalike?"

"Bruce said _lookalike._ It triggered… something. A memory."

"Not a Hydra codeword?"

"No. Just an ordinary, old, natural memory trigger. From — before." He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Rumlow was there."

"Brock Rumlow?" Natasha's voice was sharp.

"Yeah. Him and Pierce. And…" Bucky knew the face but not the name. "Another guy." He didn't think he _wanted_ to know the name. But it came to him after a moment anyway. "Stringer. Ro.. Roger? Robert? Robert Stringer. Rob." He shuddered.

"I don't know the name," Steve said. "Anyone else?"

Various responses in the negative came from around the room.

"Did he work for Shield?"

"Don't know. He's dead."

"Is he?"

Bucky's voice hardened. "I killed him."

"Oh."

He shoved a shaking hand through his hair and bowed his head to his knees. Tears threatened. He couldn't do this. He couldn't. He hadn't been able to do it before; why should he have to do it now?

"Bucky?"

"I need — " He choked down a sob. "I need my notebooks. Please. Someone."

"I'll go," Nat said. The door opened and closed softly.

"And if you could all stop staring at me, that would be great."

"Sorry, man," said Clint. "Sam, did you see the game last night?"

Their quiet chatter filled the silence. After a minute Tony patted Bucky's metal arm and left him alone. Bucky heard his voice start up over by Steve's bed.

"Wanda," said Bruce, sounding far too cheerful. "Come on, let's go upstairs."

"What? Upstairs, why?"

"Cheesecake."

There was a pause. She wasn't stupid. She had to know it was a bribe to get her out of the room. But she was just a kid. Bucky could have kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier. She didn't need to hear this; and from the sound of it, Bruce didn't _want_ to hear it.

Probably for the best. He'd get emotional, and then they'd all be in trouble.

"Fine," she said. "You owe me a double slice."

Bruce laughed. "You drive a hard bargain. A double it is."

Footsteps. The door opened and closed again.

Bucky stared at the chink of light between his knees and deliberately slowed his breathing. It worked; by the time Natasha came back with the backpack — how had she known where it was? He hadn't told anyone — his pulse rate had settled back to normal, thoughts no longer racing at a million miles an hour.

"Thanks," he murmured when she dropped it beside him. A quick rummage in the main compartment turned up the right notebook and a pen. He shifted to sit cross legged, bent over the page, and started scribbling. Fact, fact, fact, and then a tentative hypothesis. Another string of facts, concrete flashes of memories. He scribbled a thick line through the hypothesis and started again. Fact. Fact. Something he'd thought was a fact, but now appeared to be… not a fact. Truth. Untruth. He circled a word. Drew a line linking two prominent images. Fact, fact, fact…

The tangle of contradictory thoughts and images smoothed into something resembling coherence. He saw the pattern to it now, the careful lie they'd fed him; nothing too overt, nothing that screamed _we're playing you, sucker._ They never treated him like he was stupid. Like a _thing,_ yes; like an animal that could show initiative and take orders, yes; but like he was _stupid?_ No. They were never that stupid, themselves. They knew how to feed him seemingly unrelated pieces of information and leave him to make his own conclusions.

And if that conclusion was erroneous, all the better.

Facts could be deceiving, even inside the safety of his head. _Especially_ inside his head. And a fact that wasn't true was no fact at all.

"Steve," Bucky said.

Steve's head whipped around, cutting off the conversation with Stark. "Yeah?"

"You remember that day we skipped church to go swimming at the Jackson's farm? With the gang and those two new girls, what were their names, uh, Jenny? And Linda?"

"Cindy. Jenny and Cindy. And the Jackson twins came out to join us. I remember."

"You jumped off the dam, hit a rock at the bottom. Got cut up pretty bad."

Steve winced. "Yeah. That hurt."

"You still got that scar in unmentionable places?"

"Think so. Why?"

"Mind checking for me?"

Steve raised his eyes to the ceiling. His hand slipped under the covers. He shifted a little, mouth twisting thoughtfully, and after a second he said, "Yep. Still there."

Bucky nodded and drew a thick line around his verdict in the notebook. "Thanks. It wasn't you."

"What wasn't me?"

"The dead guy."

"I'm… Bucky. I'm not dead."

Bucky laughed shortly. "I know, pal."

He watched Steve's expression run from perplexity through confusion to horror. He'd put it together, then: the fact that Bucky knowing from a scar that the dead man wasn't Steve meant Bucky had to have seen the location of that scar on the dead man. And that was worthy of a few nightmares, itself.

"Bucky — " Steve rasped. He drew a shuddering breath, bracing himself. "Did — did you — "

"No."

Steve deflated.

Bucky drew his own calming breath. Set his back square against the wall. Straightened his shoulders. "I'll tell you. But stop me if it gets to be too much, okay? It's not pretty, and I wasn't the only one hurt just now."

Natasha snorted a laugh. When he darted a look her way, she waved for him to go on.

"Yeah," Steve said. "Of course, yeah. But are you sure — "

"Yes."

"Okay."

"I repressed it." He ignored the stares of Sam and Clint and Natasha and Tony, and kept his eyes fixed on Steve. "After I dragged you out of the Potomac and went off to find myself… I started getting some memories back. Bits and pieces. This one tried to come back when I was in Romania. It's one of the more recent ones. Must have been. Pierce was there, he hadn't been there in person for that long. And I couldn't handle it, couldn't deal with it then, so I repressed it. Consciously. Locked it away again."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah." _Duh._ "Easy enough once you know how. I don't recommend it. Long term damage is more or less a given, and you can't always control when they chose to appear again. Like now."

"Alright."

Bucky swallowed. "July 4th, 2012." His mouth spasmed in something that wasn't quite a smile. "It was a birthday present. For you."

"Your birthday's 4th of July, Cap?" Tony asked.

"It is." Steve's voice was strained.

"Independence Day, seriously?"

"Yeah. 2012… I came out of the ice in April. Go on, Bucky."

"I didn't know you existed. Didn't even know _I_ existed. Looking back at it now, I… I don't know. Maybe it was a test. Cue some stimuli, see if I remembered anything. Or maybe it was just another power trip. Pierce liked those."

"Did he?"

"Oh, yeah. Rumlow was a soldier just doing his job, but Pierce liked the power, the control of it all. The conscious doublethink. And Stringer…" Bucky sucked air through his nose. "Stringer was something else again."

Sam frowned. "Was it just those three?"

He shook his head. "Rumlow's whole team was there. He wasn't team leader then. I don't remember who was. We were fitting out some new gear when Pierce and Stringer turned up with the guest."

"He wasn't me," Steve said.

"He wasn't you. But he looked… he looked…" Bucky gritted his teeth. " _Lookalike_. He could have been your twin from before the serum, honestly. Voice was pitched too high and he didn't have that scar, but apart from that…"

"He wasn't me," Steve repeated firmly.

"I know!" _Breathe._ "I know that — now. But at the time…"

"Yeah." Steve looked like he wanted to vomit.

"You're okay?"

"Me? Fine." His expression firmed. "Don't worry about me."

Bucky snorted. "I always worry about you. Something to do with your stunning lack of self-preservation, I think."

"Speak for yourself, pal. What happened then?"

He sobered. "Pierce threw me a file. Told me to read it. It was — ostensibly — yours. Enemy of the state, agent of mass destruction, mass murderer, general mucker-upperer of operations, that sort of thing. So that I understood why they were doing this, you know. The poor guy got chained up on the other side of the room. He looked terrified. Wet his pants when Pierce and Stringer started talking about what they were going to do for his _birthday present._ "

"Wait," Tony said, "he actually — "

"Yes, Stark, he literally urinated. Don't laugh. It's not funny."

The smile vanished from Tony's face. "Sorry."

"Rumlow and his guys got ordered out of the room. Brock wanted to take me with him, said he had some tactical gear we hadn't finished trying yet. Pierce vetoed that."

" _Brock_?" Clint asked. "You were on a first name basis with that weasel Rumlow?"

Bucky stared at him. "No. I wasn't on an any name basis with anyone. But." He closed his eyes. Found the memory in its box on the mental shelf. Pulled it forward. "He touched me once. On the shoulder. Barely there, really. A split-second of contact, that's all. And he said… _nice shot._ " Even now, he knew an urge to lean in to that brief touch. "That night, it took me six hours to stop crying. I felt the warmth for the next week. Almost turned myself in for reconditioning, I was that confused about what it was, what it meant. But it never happened again. I labelled it an anomaly and forgot about it."

He opened his eyes.

Clint looked like he'd been blindsided by a truck. "I didn't know…" _it was like that._

"I hope you never do," Bucky said.

Steve cleared his throat. "So, uh… Rumlow's team was sent out?"

"Yeah. Left Pierce, Stringer, and me. And… not you. Him. The lookalike. Whoever he was." Bucky looked down at his hand, found it clenched unconsciously on his leg, and straightened the fingers out. Stringer's voice floated through his head, cold and mocking. " _Don't tense up, now, Captain. That'll just make this worse for you._ "

"Buck, you don't have to — "

"I do." He met Steve's worried gaze. "Please. Just let me finish this."

"Okay."

Bucky balanced on the fragile seesaw between crippling emotion and the clipped neutrality of a mission report. Kept his voice level with an effort. "Pierce liked the power plays. The violence. He slapped him around, got him dirty, made him grovel. I watched."

Tony opened his mouth.

"I didn't have any orders to the contrary."

Tony closed his mouth.

"I didn't have orders to participate, either. Thankfully."

"Did they — " Steve grimaced. "Don't answer if you don't want to. Did that happen often?"

"No." Despite himself, Bucky could feel his control slipping. His voice became more matter-of-fact, disconnected from the raging turmoil within. "Hydra had invested too much into me to use me like that. Too much money, too much high tech… they'd already broken me mentally. They didn't need to break me physically as well." His metal fingers twitched. "Any more than they already had, at least."

Steve blew out a long breath. "Right."

"Then Stringer stepped up." Bucky stared across the yawning gulf to the storm raging on the far side. The air was quiet, here. Peaceful. Tranquil, like his voice. "He had… certain appetites. Pierce found him useful. There are some forms of torture even the most violent of men can't bring themselves to perform. And there are other men who delight in them." He breathed calmly. In. Out. "Stringer was sick. Perverse. A deviant, you might say."

The room was suffocatingly silent.

"I'll spare you the details. There was a lot of blood. And… other fluids."

Sam swore under his breath.

"Stringer finished with him. Pierce put a gun in my hand. Told me to terminate him, but to make it slow. Make it last."

Steve went white.

Bucky stared through him, seeing the shattered husk of his twin sprawled across the cold floor. "I had two minutes to make the shot. They wanted him to die as near midnight as possible. They framed it as a test of my abilities. Give me that sliver of tactical choice, see what I'd do with it."

"And?" Natasha breathed the question like a prayer.

"I shot him," Bucky said. "One bullet, upper right torso, on the edge between two ribs where it nicked the lung on the way through. Pierce took the gun back. Strapped me to my chair. And they left me for the night. Alone. With him." The memory should have been upsetting. He couldn't feel a thing. "They hadn't given me permission to sleep. I watched him drag himself to the far wall. He kept looking back over his shoulder, like he thought I was about to leap over and attack him again. And I watched him die."

Silence.

"It took seven hours, forty six minutes, and twelve seconds. His heart stopped at eleven fifty nine and twenty two seconds. Thirty eight seconds before midnight."

Steve was crying. Bucky felt numb.

"What did they cost you?" Clint asked.

Bucky blinked. "What?"

"Those thirty eight seconds. They would have wanted you to judge it to the second, surely; never mind that human physiology is a ridiculously complex thing and you couldn't in a month of Sundays be expected to accurately judge how fast his system would weaken down to the second of heart failure. They would have seen it as thirty seven seconds of error. Of _your_ error. What did it cost you?"

He forgot, sometimes. That Clint had been on the same end of the gun as Bucky himself. Had known the crushing desire to obey the handler's will. Known the paralysing fear of making the slightest mistake. That even before Shield, he'd had taskmasters with impossible standards and rigorous systems of discipline and punishment.

Bucky knew what that was like.

"Pain," Bucky said finally. "There was — pain."

More than that, he couldn't say. Truthfully, he didn't remember. He tipped his head back against the wall and scrubbed his hands over his face, shaking. His eyes closed of their own accord. He couldn't remember ever being this tired.

No, that was a lie. He remembered being this tired perhaps half a dozen times before.

It was more than physical exhaustion. He felt mentally drained, wrung out, laid bare. And — small victories — he was _himself_ enough to admit it.

"I need sleep," he said. "Or space. Please. Sorry."

"Sure, man."

"Of course."

The couch vanished back out into the corridor. There was a shuffle of movement around the room as they said their goodbyes and get-wells to Steve. On the way out the door, Natasha paused. "What happened to Stringer?"

Bucky looked up at her from the floor. "He was on the team for my next mission. It went south; his incompetence nearly got us caught. I snapped and killed him. In hindsight, I wonder if… if Pierce thought I was starting to connect the dots, that the memories were resurfacing. Latent response to the violence, maybe. I don't know. They sent me for reconditioning as soon as we got back, anyway. Wiped me. Started over with a clean slate. And I forgot the whole thing until Bucharest. And then forgot again. Until now."

Sam drew a breath, eyes dark. Paused. Let it out again. "Let us know if you need anything, yeah? Anything. I mean it. Both of you," he added, glancing between Bucky and Steve.

"We will," Steve said. "Thanks."

Clint gave Bucky a hand up off the floor and helped him shuffle across the floor to collapse in the chair beside Steve.

And then the door closed behind the four visitors, leaving them alone in peace.

"Buck," Steve said after a few minutes.

"Mm." Head tipped back against the seat, body melting into the hard embrace of the hospital chair, Bucky didn't open his eyes.

"Thanks."

"For making you cry?"

"For telling me."

"Warned you it wasn't pretty."

"No. It wasn't. But it needed to be said. And heard."

"Mm." He cracked his eyes open to stare at the white ceiling tiles. "I've been reliably informed — by Sam — that open communication is important in trauma recovery."

"Sounds accurate."

"Yeah."

Steve held out a hand. "Come here."

Every bone in his body yawned with the effort of finding his feet. Bucky half-stood, swaying with exhaustion, and let Steve pull him down onto the bed. This close to another warm body, he could feel the fine tremors, almost sub-dermal, that followed a recovered memory. He nestled carefully into Steve's side, mindful of the blankets and trailing wires.

Strong fingers combed through his hair. His mind was blank. He gave himself over to the motion of it. Rhythmic. Calming.

Lying down, he could imagine he was swimming in the ocean. Cool waves rocked him in quiet counterpoint to the trembling. Blue sky. Cloudless. The sun caressed his hair, warming him from the inside. He smelled salt in the air. Heard the hoarse cry of seagulls.

He floated and let the waves lull him to sleep.


	10. Chapter 7, Part 1

**I don't own it.**

 **Voting is still open for which story you'd like me to post next! Your options are:**

 **Option 1: Berlinterview. Civil War alternate take on the Bucky Interrogation scene. Dialogue- and character-heavy with an action epilogue covering the fallout. 28,000 words, 10 chapters. Bucky and Steve centric with support from Tony, Sam, Nat, and T'Challa.**

 **Option 2: Barton, Undercover. A 5+1 fic based around the idea that in Jeremy Renner's other movies, he's really Clint undercover. 4,400 words, 6 chapters. Clint centric (duh) with Nat showing up in the last chapter.**

 **You've got until I post the final chapter of Hugs to get your vote in. Which is the next chapter, actually. So you've got maybe three days. Right now the votes are pretty nearly even.**

 **Thanks! Enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter Seven

Prompt: Brother

Inadvertent art prompt: pinterest dot com /pin/519813981969936439/

* * *

Bucky woke to the sound of Steve vomiting.

He was clearly in no shape to be released from hospital. His medical team scurried to and fro, frowning and running tests and looking more harried as time wore on. Bucky stuck to his side like a limpet, distracting him as best he could with light banter, reading chapters of his book aloud, showing him videos of cats on the internet. Helen's ever-present smile started to fade by nightfall. Steve slept, and woke, and slept again. Bucky wiped the sweat away, watched Steve tossing and turning, and found himself genuinely praying for the first time since Zola's experiments after Azzano.

The next day, Steve could hardly sit up long enough to eat a few bites. His stare was glassy, eyes flitting around the room, never settling in one spot. "Hot," he mumbled when Bucky asked how he felt. "Too hot. Like I'm burning up." After a while he slipped into semi-consciousness, staring at nothing while the team bustled around them. Bucky damped the cloth again, wiped sweaty hair back from his forehead, and clamped down on futile tears.

Steve wouldn't die.

He _couldn't._

By dinnertime on the second day, Helen's mouth formed a thin, straight line, and Bucky himself was snappish ball of nerves. Bruce brought food down for him; Bucky murmured an absent-minded thanks and set it aside. He'd eat later.

"I can take over," Bruce offered. "If you want to get some air… freshen up…. whatever."

Bucky shook his head.

"Do you, uh… want to talk about it?"

"No."

Bruce shifted his weight. "Bucky. You can't keep going like this. You'll wear yourself out."

"He needs me."

"He hardly knows you're here." The words were gentle.

Bucky hadn't known Steve was there, either, back when he was the Winter Soldier. But Steve had been there for him.

He wasn't going to let Steve down. Not again.

"He needs me," he repeated.

"An hour," Bruce said. "He can spare you that long. Have you even left this room since we were down here two nights ago?"

"No."

"So go on. Take a shower, take a nap, get some air. See some blue sky. The sun's shining. It's nice day outside."

"I don't — "

"How long has it been since you've slept?"

The answer sprang to his lips without conscious thought. The mind had more important things to think about. But the body knew. "Forty three hours."

"That's…" Bruce gaped. "That's insane. _Bucky._ You need to sleep, you're no use to — "

"I don't need sleep!" Bucky found himself on his feet, looming over Bruce. He glanced at Steve and moderated his tone. "I'm fine."

"No-one's fine on forty three hours without sleep. Who's going to look after Steve if you collapse and no-one's around, huh?"

"I said I'm fine."

"You can't — "

Bucky leant close and dropped his voice to a vicious whisper. "If I need to, I can go for fifty hours before I drop below peak condition. Ninety before I feel any serious impairment. One hundred and twenty before my system shuts down and initiates a complete reset. Hydra programmed me to run without sleep. Do you want me to tell you _how_ they did that?"

Bruce's face was pale. He shook his head. "No."

"No. You don't." Breathing shallow, Bucky sat back down and reclaimed Steve's limp hand. "Thanks for the food."

* * *

It was eleven o'clock when Bucky noticed the dreaded spikes on the tox monitor starting to decrease. He stared, hardly daring to blink, and let it cycle for four minutes. No, his eyes hadn't lied to him. 4.47. 4.46. And again. 4.44 that time. Heart in his mouth, he hit the call button.

The first responder took sixteen seconds to arrive. She took one look at the tox screen and pulled out her phone. Despite the late hour, the full medical team converged on Steve within five minutes.

Twenty minutes after that, Helen Cho smiled again.

Steve had stabilised. The poison had been stopped. His system was in the process of breaking it down.

He was out of the woods.

Bucky stared blindly at the whirl of activity going on around the hospital bed as the realisation sank in. He would live. Steve would live. He — he would _live._

His chin quivered treacherously.

He groped for his phone. The screen blurred into nothing. He blinked rapidly and tried again. Better. Fingers trembling, he typed a halting message and flicked a mass text off to the others.

Bucky: _he's stabilised. tox dropping. visitors welcome a.m. two coffees please. and food._

And after a minute of more staring, he realised what he'd forgotten.

Bucky: _Thank you._

Finally there was nothing more they could do for him. The running checks came through clean, showing exponential improvement. It was up to Steve now. Helen thanked Bucky profusely for waking them up and then chivvied her team out, telling him not to hesitate if he needed anything else.

The door closed on the last of them.

Bucky watched the rise and fall of Steve's chest for a long minute. Alive. Alive. Steve was — Steve would continue to be — alive.

He lowered his head to the bed and cried.

* * *

Steve had been awake for an hour by the time the others turned up at nine o'clock with pastries and coffee. They flooded inside, talking and laughing nineteen to the dozen. Bucky removed his arm from around Steve's shoulders and slipped off the bed.

"I need a shower," he said. "You'll be alright?"

Steve, pale but alert, rolled his eyes. "No, I'm going to have a heart attack as soon as you leave the room. I can't survive five minutes without you, I thought you knew that."

Bucky flipped him off. "You'd wonder, some days. Keep your phone on. Back soon." He slipped past the crowd at the door, met Bruce's knowing glance with a half-hearted glare, and vanished upstairs.

Courtesy of the supersoldier serum and better-than-cutting-edge medical care, Steve's recovery was phenomenal. By lunchtime he was alternately griping about the enforced bed rest and turning on the full Rogers charm for the med team. Helen remained unmoved — although she flushed a little when Thor popped in briefly — and Steve's release was set for seven o'clock that night, on the sole condition that his improvement remained steady.

When Natasha brought their afternoon coffees at four o'clock, she found them engaged in a one-armed pushup contest.

"Steve wouldn't settle," Bucky said, panting. Steve had made him use his human hand, claiming the metal arm gave him an unfair advantage. "Needed to work off some steam."

"So you decided on this?" She put the coffees down and perched on the arm of the visitor's chair. The phone made its compulsory appearance.

Steve poked his tongue out at her. "Peggy could do one hundred and seven. She licked the rest of the Howling Commandos hollow."

"Excuse — me," Bucky gasped. "I managed ninety eight, thank you."

Nat grinned. "Steve?"

"Camp Lehigh, I couldn't even do one. Austria, I stopped at one hundred and eight." He wiped away sweat. He was right-handed; Bucky had made him use his left arm for the contest. As if it would make any real difference. "She would've punched me if I'd lost on purpose. But I didn't want to win by too much."

The phone's blinking red light turned from Steve to Bucky. "And how many are you boys on now?"

Bucky blew out a breath and traded a glance with Steve. "Fifteen hundred?"

"Sixteen, I think."

They dipped and rose in unison, dipped and rose again. Bucky couldn't deny that their pace was slowing.

"Sixteen hundred, you might be right. I lost count somewhere around _three_ hundred."

Natasha tapped at her phone. "If you're going for a world record, you're losing."

"How's that?"

"Guinness World Record for the most pushups in an hour is two thousand two hundred and twenty."

"We've been going eighteen minutes."

"The twenty-four hour record is… let's see… forty-six thousand. And one."

Bucky darted another glance at Steve, and was relieved to find his own feelings mirrored there. "Truce?"

"Truce." Steve collapsed to lie on the floor. "We'll try again when I'm feeling better. I've been sick."

"I've been running myself ragged looking after you."

"Excuses, excuses."

"Shut up, Rogers."

"Make me, Barnes."

The ensuing tickle fight only stopped when they rolled too close to the table and nearly knocked their rapidly cooling coffees off it.

"Oh," said Natasha in surprise. She sounded far too innocent.

Bucky grabbed his coffee, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at her suspiciously. "What?"

"I got it wrong. Those records were for normal pushups, not one-armed."

Steve groaned and threw himself flat on the bed beside Bucky. "Now you tell us."

"Sorry."

"You are not."

"No, not really." She grinned. "Will you be upstairs for dinner?"

"Yes," said Steve before Bucky could answer. "Bucky's already posted bail for me. Helen's signing the release warrant at seven on the dot."

"Excellent. I'll see the two of you then."


	11. Chapter 7, Part 2

**I don't own it.**

 **Thank you for following along! It's been a journey and half! I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.**

 **The people have spoken! The next story that will be posted is Berlinterview, an alternate take on the Berlin interrogation scene from Civil War. See the end notes for a sneak preview, because you guys are awesome and I'm in a good mood from reading your lovely reviews.**

 **And now: on to the finale, in which the story prompt finally makes its appearance.**

* * *

Dinner was a riotous affair. Still riding the wave of relief that Steve's recovery had brought, Bucky felt giddy as a schoolboy. Steve himself was in fine form after the days cooped up down below; he laughed harder than anyone at Clint's story of a prank gone wrong at Natasha's sister's place. With dessert cleared away, they pushed their chairs back from the massive dining table and reconvened at the couches.

Tony hovered over the side, looking unaccustomedly nervous.

"What?" Bucky said, when Tony tried to catch his eye for the tenth time.

"I… look, you know the knife you used the other day?"

Steve snorted. "You might have to be more specific, Stark. He's got a few knives, you know."

"The one you said my dad designed."

A hush fell over the room.

"I know it," Bucky said. He glanced down at his t-shirt and jeans. "I don't have it with me…"

"No, that's okay, let me just…" Tony trailed off. He stalked to the door, thrust an arm around the corner, and came back carrying the knife in its sheath. "Here."

Bucky took it. "Uh. Okay. Why?"

"You were going to tell me about it."

"Because," Bucky muttered sarcastically, "the first thing I want to do when my best friend is recovering from a near-death experience is talk to his friend, who is also kinda my boss, about a knife that was designed by said boss's dad, who was also _my_ friend and who is now _dead_ because I killed him."

"You were brainwashed," Steve said reflexively.

The air grew tense.

"Well," drawled Clint, "her name's Amanda, she's tall and skinny, and she makes Sergeant Barnes a very happy man."

The atmosphere broke with the sound of Steve's laughter.

"Leisl, actually," Bucky said, fighting a grin.

Tony sat down on the arm of the couch opposite, beside Sam. "Wait, what?"

"Leisl." He flourished the sheathed knife. "Its name is Leisl."

Clint stared. "I was joking, man. You actually name your knives?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"I do," said Nat, raising a hand.

"Yeah, but you're weird," Clint said. He sipped his beer. "Do you name all of them, or just the ones that Stark — Junior or Senior— designed?"

"Just the special ones."

"No Clint, then," said Sam, and yelped as he got an elbow in the ribs.

Bucky brushed his hair back from his face. "I really don't have many on me at the moment, you know. This is Leisl — " waving the long knife. He pulled the hunting knife from the waistband at the small of his back. "Elsa, my German hunting knife. And…" He pulled up the leg of his jeans. "These three. Throwing knives. Kirk, Spock, Bones. In that order."

Tony threw his head and laughed. "Bucky Barnes is a geek. I love you."

"Speak for yourself, Junior."

"So where'd the knife come from? Uh, Leisl. Leisl's original, I mean. You know, back in the day. When Dad designed it."

"Well." Bucky stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankle, and sipped his wine. "November 1943, he met a guy…"

"Hope he was discreet. Go on."

Steve made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

"A friend," Bucky clarified. He'd walked straight into that one. The 21st Century was so _weird._ What sort of a son said things like that about their father? "Or friend of a friend, really. Sergeant. He was a sniper. Had a bad habit of getting caught in melees because his C.O. wouldn't stay out of trouble." He could feel Steve glaring a hole in the side of his head. He passed Steve his glass without looking and stood. "So Stark — Howard, I mean — made him this."

He drew and flipped the knife in a single fluid movement, testing its weight and spin, and ended with the flat of the blade balanced on a fingertip at the midpoint. Or what should have been the midpoint. Leisl tilted. He juggled it for a moment until he found the right balance. There. Closer to the tang than muscle memory had told him. "You changed the midpoint?"

"I don't know," Tony said. "Did I? His notes were pretty patchy."

"You did. The old midpoint was…" He flipped the knife upright and caught the flat of the blade between finger and thumb as it came down. "Here." He adjusted his grip. "But you've put it here, closer to the guard."

"Huh." Tony cocked his head, eyes narrowing. "Alright. You used one of these knives, then? Back in the day?"

" _The_ knife, yes. There was only one."

"You were the Sergeant?"

"Yep."

Tony's eyes moved to Steve and crinkled at the corners. "Cap was your C.O. who wouldn't stay out of trouble."

"I was," Steve sighed mock-regretfully and sipped Bucky's wine.

"Hey!" Bucky snatched his glass back. "Mine. Thief."

"What's yours is mine, pal."

"No, it isn't."

"Is, too. We had that contract."

Bucky flipped the knife and passed it to Tony, hilt-first. "That contract related to a very small subset of belongs, most of which were still in our apartment in Brooklyn. They could be anywhere by now. Or nowhere."

"Probably nowhere."

"Damn. I liked that fridge magnet."

"Explains a lot," Tony said, half under his breath.

"Explains what?"

"Oh. Uh. You. With the knife. The other day. It explains how you used it so well, if you'd had one almost the same during the war."

"Different balance point. Different heft to it. Makes a world of difference."

"Hmm." Bucky could see the wheels turning in Tony's mind a second before he asked, too casually, "Which one's better?"

"What, yours or Howard's?"

"Yeah. Which one's better?"

Bucky mulled that over. "Good question." He took the knife back and unsheathed it. Glanced around to lock in his bearings. "Don't move," he told Steve.

"What are you — " Tony started.

Steve just sighed. "Yeah, alright. I won't."

Bucky closed his eyes and launched into a flurry of movement, blade spinning, circling, darting out, pulling in; spinning again, right hand, left hand, right hand; switched to a reverse hold and thrust backward.

And held it steady — he glanced over his shoulder — yes, good, half an inch below Steve's left earlobe.

They were working on the trust issues.

"They're about the same," he said after a moment. "Yours isn't better than his. Just… different." He passed the knife back to Tony, sat down next to Steve, and reassumed the crossed-ankles position. "Alright?"

Steve had an almost comical expression of long-suffering on his face. " _Yes_ , Bucky. I'm fine."

"Excellent."

Sam glanced between them. "Is this, ah… normal? Bucky trying to stab you, Steve?"

"I didn't — " Bucky started.

"He didn't try to stab me. If he'd — "

"If I'd wanted to, he'd — "

"I'd be dead, yes."

"And we don't want that," Bucky finished.

"No," said Steve. "No, we don't."

There was a long moment of silence. Natasha looked at Clint, Clint looked at Sam, Sam looked at Tony, Tony looked at Bruce, Bruce looked at Wanda, Wanda looked at Vision — Bucky blinked; when had Vision arrived? He'd thought he was still in hibernation having repairs done — and, completing the circle, Vision looked at Natasha.

Nobody looked at Bucky. Or Steve.

"What?" Steve asked as the silence stretched.

"Uuuhhhhhh." Tony scratched his head. Looked around at the others.

They studiously avoided eye contact.

"Wanda, maybe you should…"

"I'm not leaving," Wanda said. "I was the one who pointed it out to you in the first place! And besides, there's no cheesecake left."

Bruce snorted a laugh.

Tony cleared his throat. "Nobody else wants to do this?"

"Do _what?_ " Steve asked.

"I don't think they do, Stark," Bucky said. "Looks like it's up to you. Whatever it is."

"Oh. Right. Okay." He took a breath. Sat on the couch. Clasped his hands. "Look, you two know it's 2017 now, right?"

Steve quirked an eyebrow. "I think we've apprehended that much, yes."

"And certain, uh, customs, behaviours, shall we say… that weren't really, um, accepted in the 40's… are, are okay now."

Bucky stared at him blankly. "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."

"I was afraid you might say that."

He glanced at Natasha for help. She grimaced and opened her mouth —

"What I'm trying to say," Tony burst out. "Is. It's okay. We're very, uh, accepting. These days. Of, of, everyone. Different sorts of people."

Bucky stared around at the group which included a black American soldier, a Sokovian woman, and an Artificial Intelligence… thing. "Yeah," he said. "We know. What's your point?"

Wanda leant forward. "What Tony is trying, very ineptly, to say," she said, ignoring Tony's glare, "is that we know you two are gay, and it's perfectly fine."

 _What._

Bucky looked sideways at Steve.

Steve stared back at Bucky.

And they burst out laughing.

"You — you think — " Steve clutched his ribs, eyes watering. "Ow. Ow that hurts. Ow."

"Breathe, punk," Bucky wheezed through his own tears.

"I _am_ breathing."

"Good. Keep — keep breathing. Ow. Ow." Bucky pulled his knees to his chest, trying to ease the tightening in his abs, and sobbed with laughter.

In front of them, Tony threw up his hands. "If you two are quite finished?"

"No," Steve said, and started laughing again. "We're not finished."

"Never."

"For this? Never _ever._ "

Tony stared at them, perplexed. Looked at the rest of the group. Looked back at them.

Bucky nudged Steve.

And then nudged him again.

"Okay. Okay, I'm fine. Breathing. Yes. Whew." Steve swiped blonde hair off his forehead and grinned. "Sorry. What were you saying? Oh yeah. Bucky and I are gay." He suppressed another fit of laughter with what looked like herculean effort. "Sorry to prove that theory wrong."

"You haven't proved it wrong," Clint said lazily, slouching in his seat.

"I thought we just did," Bucky said. "You know. Laughing at you."

Steve sighed. "Would it help if I said, out loud, the words _we're not gay_?"

Bucky caught a mutter of _denial_ from somewhere on the other side of the room. He groaned and dropped his head back against the couch. "Seriously?"

"Um," said Bruce. "You do, kinda, act a bit gay."

"No, we don't."

"Yeah, you do," said Tony.

"No," said Bucky. "We don't. We act how any other pair of close male friends would have acted in the 40's. And how they still act these days, actually. You've just been so, so —" he groped for the words, "so _indoctrinated_ that you couldn't spot a platonic physical relationship if your life depended on it."

Natasha shrugged. "Alright."

"You believe us?"

"I can see your perspective on it."

"That's not a yes."

She flashed a smile. "I do have a pretty compromising photo of you two."

Steve bolted upright, frowning. "What?"

"Just a sec." Tap, tap, on her phone. The screen on the wall lit up.

Steve groaned. "You got a photo of _that_?"

It was the morning after Steve's wanna-go-home crisis. Bucky and Steve curled together on the couch, Steve's arm flung over Bucky's chest, the blanket fallen to drape over their tangled legs…

"Come on." Bucky rolled his eyes. "You've heard of a _hug_ , right? Or do they not exist these days?"

"That's a lying down hug."

"Fully clothed."

"Lots of contact happening."

"Contact? If that's all the supposed proof you need, I have plenty of proof that you and Clint have a thing going on, and he's — "

Clint's eyes narrowed.

" — got that thing going on with your sister," Bucky finished.

"Okay," Tony broke in, "what about that time I found you two in bed together?"

Steve stared at him blankly. "When was that?"

"Morning of the Atlanta mission."

"Oh, that," Bucky said. "One, get your facts right: we were _on_ the bed, not _in_ it, and you make it sound like we were naked when we were…" he did a mental check, "almost fully clothed."

"Almost?" Wanda asked.

"I don't wear a shirt when I sleep. Get too sweaty. And I'd been throwing up and freaking out in the bathroom for an hour before that, so. Draw your own conclusions."

Sam winced. "Bad night?"

"You could say that." Steve's expression was thunderous. "Tony, you've never been in the army, so let me make one thing very clear to you before you go any further: Bucky and I shared a tent — and, in fact, a _bunk_ — for a month after I rescued the 107th remnant from Kreischberg. If we did that during the war, at the height of the blue-ticketing, and never got sent home, doesn't it make you wonder why? You want to know the reason? It's because _there was nothing sexual going on._ "

Tony scoffed. "So why did you share a bunk?"

Despite himself, Bucky's breath hitched. "Because Arnim Zola had just spent two weeks strapping me down to a lab table and experimenting on me. Thank you, by the way. If I have nightmares tonight, I'll know who to blame."

Something almost like remorse flashed across Tony's face.

"Okay," said Wanda. "What about the food? Thor said you were feeding Bucky on the way to the fight."

"He'd spent the last hour throwing up," Steve growled. "He had nothing left in his stomach, and he forgets to eat. You'll excuse me for making sure my best friend doesn't collapse in the middle of a battlefield."

"Who forgets to eat? That's stupid."

"Part of me," Bucky said, deathly quiet, "is used to being ordered to eat. Or force-fed through an IV line. Hydra considered that more efficient."

She flushed, stammered an apology, and subsided.

"And the roaring rampage of revenge?" Tony asked. "Your complete inability to leave his side, Barnes? You cleaned his shield!"

Steve blinked. "He what?"

Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. "I cleaned your shield. After Atlanta. It was a mess."

Natasha brought up a picture of Bucky perched on the back of the couch outside the operating theatre, dressed in filthy utility trousers and Steve's clean shirt, muscles standing out as he scrubbed away at the shield. He looked at her sharply. He hadn't realised she'd taken a photo of that.

Natasha grinned shamelessly.

"Oh," Steve said. "Thank you."

"Welcome."

"T-that's all?" Tony spluttered.

"Yeah," said Steve. "I'm sorry, were you expecting more shouting?"

"You never let _anyone_ touch the shield!"

"Bucky's not anyone."

"There we go! There! You said it!"

Steve groaned. "What part of _best friends since childhood_ do you not understand, Stark?"

Tony waved his arms wildly. "You have no concept of personal boundaries with each other!"

"Childhood friends," Bucky said through gritted teeth. "Freezing winters. No stupid culturally-conditioned fear of showing physical affection. And we were in the army, where privacy was in very short supply. If it's a choice between modesty and hygiene, I know which one I'd pick."

"And for _gosh_ sake, you speak French with each other!"

"Damn right," said Bucky.

"Yes we do," said Steve.

"It's the language of love!"

Steve dropped his forehead into his hand. "It's also the language of _France_. Where we spent some time. Because we fought. In the army. In World War II."

"We can speak German if you'd like," Bucky offered. "But then you'd probably accuse us of being Nazis. Steve, do you remember Howard being this stupid?"

"No," Steve said. "He knew when to admit he was wrong. Remember the flying car?"

"It didn't fly for long."

"No, it didn't. But at least he could _admit he'd been wrong._ "

They stared Tony down in silence.

"You," he said weakly. "You, um. Have a… a contract?"

Bucky closed his eyes and prayed for patience. "For the _apartment_. Where we _lived._ Because we were working bachelors and both of us, oddly enough, quite liked having a roof over our heads."

"Even better if it didn't leak," Steve quipped.

"Oh," said Tony. He looked utterly deflated. "It's not for, uh…" He mumbled something under his breath.

Clint barked a laugh. "Violent, dubiously-consensual sex? Have you _talked_ to Steve, Tony? _Ever?_ Give it up, man."

"Nnnnyaaaaah." Steve's voice was strangled. "I… I don't want to know. I really don't."

"Yeah," said Nat. "You don't. It's rubbish anyway. Completely inaccurate depiction of the lifestyle."

"You believe us?"

Clint shrugged. "With Nat and me no-one bats an eyelash. Everyone knows we're just good friends. I don't see why you two should be any different."

"Thank you," Bucky sighed. Finally, someone who could see sense.

Tony took a breath.

Steve groaned and brought both hands up in a double facepalm.

And Tony said, in the voice of a desperate last-ditch attempt, "You finish each other's sentences."

Bucky stood up. "Right. You and me, Junior. Down in the gym. We'll go a few rounds and once I've whipped your sorry behind, you're going to admit you're wrong."

Sam cleared his throat.

Bucky sat down. Rolled his eyes heavenward. "Yes, Sam. Sorry, Tony. Violence is not the answer."

" _It's the question,_ " Steve muttered, sotto voce. " _And the answer is yes._ "

Sam looked at Steve and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh for goodness' — yes, Sam, no, I know. Sorry. I didn't mean it, you know that."

"I'm with the Sarge," Tony said unexpectedly. "Gym. Let's go."

"What?" Sam burst out. "Tony. No."

"No, no, it's fine. I agree to their terms. If Barnes beats me in a fair fight — or, well, fair-ish — then I will freely and of my own will admit that they are, both of them, completely heterosexual and they're totally not in a gooey romantic relationship with each other at all."

"Because we're not," Steve said with a sigh.

"And if you beat Bucky?" Clint asked.

"Then…" Tony hummed. "I'll still be open to negotiations. I mean, I've never known Cap to lie to my face. He might be in denial, but that's a different matter."

Bucky cracked his knuckles and stood. "You're on, Stark."

"Bucky," said Sam.

"Are you coming?"

"No! This is lunacy."

"This is politics." Tony grinned. "And we need a referee. Who's your second, Barnes?"

"Second?"

He winked. "In case I kill you."

"Steve. Who's yours?"

"Uh… Where's Rhodey? On holiday, right. Bruce."

"What?"

"You're my second." Tony clapped him on the shoulder and steered him toward the door. "If Barnes kills me, I want you to avenge my death. Make it loud. Messy. Dramatic. You know the sort of thing I like."

"Steve," Bucky whined, overly loud, "Tony's touching another man! And he's making innuendos!"

Tony flipped the bird over his shoulder. The crowd vanished into the hall.

Bucky popped his head back in. "You coming, Wilson?"

Sam groaned and stood up. "I suppose someone's got to make sure you don't kill each other."

"That's the spirit."

"You know this goes completely against any professional code of ethics ever invented, right? You don't solve sexual crises with a fist-fight. It doesn't happen."

Bucky laughed. "The only crisis we're solving today," he said, "is Stark Junior's temporary insanity."

The hallway rang with sound of their laughter, which lingered for a moment before fading into silence.

And Tony admitted defeat. Eventually.

* * *

 _fin_

* * *

 **Berlinterview Sneak Preview**

* * *

"Will you talk?" Broussard asked. His voice was deadly soft.

Bucky's metal hand trembled. "No."

"I would prefer not to force you."

Bucky swallowed. He kept his eyes closed.

"Very well." Broussard moved a dial on the remote and hit a button —

Bucky's back arched, teeth gritting, eyes opening to staring sightless at the ceiling for a moment —

And it passed. He slumped, breathing heavily.

" _What the hell!_ " Steve shouted, turning to pin Sharon with a glare. "Did you know about that?"

Bucky's laugh filled the room, dark and humourless. He sagged in his restraints, blinking at the ceiling. "You think pain will make me talk?"

"I would prefer," said Broussard, "not to do that again. But if you refuse to cooperate…"

Bucky stared him down. When he spoke, his voice was low and angry. "There's only one person whose questions I'll answer. And you're not him."


End file.
